This is Maggie's 18th Center, and it appeared in the 18th year of the existence of this charitable program. Since 1996, these free centers for information and psychological support for patients and their families have appeared in the UK at large hospitals with oncology departments. Their purpose is to provide them with an environment that is different from the cold interior of the hospital, where you can ask the professionals all your questions, talk to comrades in misfortune, read useful literature, take part in yoga classes or just have tea.
That is why in all Maggie Centers the kitchen is in the middle, and the building in Oxford was no exception. Three irregular petals radiate from the kitchen: this plan is due to the environment - the building is neatly placed among the trees of the grove on the edge of the Churchill Hospital grounds.
The grove creates a "buffer zone" separating visitors from the hospital buildings, and it also inspired the main metaphor of the project - "a house not a tree." The center is raised on glued wooden supports to a height of 4 meters, and a gentle ramp leads to the entrance. This solution is the most sparing for the local flora and fauna.
The narrow terrace surrounding the center from the outside, the only component of the building, where there is a lot of metal, allows you to get close to nature, in addition, it offers views of the nearby "nature protection zone".
The architects made the interior emphatically warm, but at the same time neutral: in their opinion, it should be a transitional space between the house and the hospital, not playing in comfort, but also far from the "corporate" and "clinical" look. The kitchen-dining table was designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects, and the seating area rug was designed by artist Diana Edmunds.
Facade cladding is made of spruce wood treated with Solignum stain, and the lattice covering the glazing surfaces is made of oak; the architects took into account the natural discoloration of the wood in the project, as well as the copper cladding of the roof, which will eventually become patinated. The building itself was constructed from multi-layer cross-layered panels.
The Maggie Centers, which architects design for free, were invented by Maggie Kezwick-Jenks, a landscape architect and Charles Jenks's wife, who died of cancer in 1995. Friends of the Jenks couple, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers, as well as other architects who are not indifferent to the problem of oncological diseases, became the authors of the projects of these oncological centers.
