STELLAR architect and Mancunian Norman Foster has agreed to design a building for the cancer charity Maggie’s Centres at The Christie Hospital in Manchester.
The model is to form a local board to get all elements in place and to spearhead fund raising
Talks are at an early stage but the Stirling Prize winning practice confirmed: “We are in discussions with Maggie's about working on a new centre.”
Set up by Maggie Keswick Jencks before her death in 1995 the centre’s that bear her name are designed to be places of restorative calm and companionship - a welcoming contrast to the often harsh hospital environment.
Nine are already open in the UK, six more on site or in planning and all are the work of the world’s leading architects. Jencks’ belief being that the design of a building, its space and its energy, can have a dramatic effect on its users.
They provide practical help and support not just for those coping with cancer but their relatives and friends who have to cope too. Maggies Centres website here.
It is fitting that Foster, now Lord Foster of Thames Bank, should be invited to design at The Christie having grown up just down the road in Levenshulme. Click here for Foster and Partners website. Oddly this will be his first building in the city in which he grew up.
There is a suggestion in the Architect’s Journal that the new building will go on a plot of land originally intended for a multi-storey car park behind a proposed £20m Research Centre.
But no-one at The Christie was able to confirm that when asked and the communications team could only say: “no further information is currently available”.
According to Maggies, hospital health trusts across the country are falling over themselves to try and get a centre and much depends on site suitability and the ability to raise funds.
London centre
In 2006 the people of Fife raised £500,000 for a Zaha Hadid designed centre that was opened by the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown whose wife Sarah remains patron of the charity. The Swansea centre is the main picture at the top of the page.
More recently Piers Gough’s woodland oasis clad in green ceramic tiles, was delivered for a seemingly modest £1.45m.
Others have cost twice that and the policy is not to start building until enough funds have been raised to construction costs plus two years running costs.
The model is to form a local board to get all elements in place and to spearhead fund raising and expect that to be announced this summer.
Nottingham centre
