Continued analysis...
[REGARDING EMERGING DESTINATION CULTURES OF NEW TYPOLOGIES: SPA, RELAXATION CLINIC,WELLNESS CENTRE, REHAB RETREAT] Page 89: ‘These are buildings relating to healthcare yet as far as it is possible to get from hospitals, places where people will pay a fortune to be, rather than from which they are keen to escape.’ Page 89: ‘The shift from treatment at home to treatment in hospital presented a fundamental change … ‘At home, the patient is master and paymaster; in hospital … ‘the patient is a guest at the physician’s institution. Power shifts from patient to physician.’
Page 89: ‘Patient-centred design which has emerged in the post-modern era attempts to repolarise the relationship, to restore power to the patient over his or her own body. This shift comes with the emergence of an architecture of well-being, of the spa and retreat, but one which is radically different from the same institution of a century ago. Hoffman’s Purkersdorf Sanatorium was something very different to what we would desire today …In direct contrast is the building which so often emerges as the architect’s favourite, Peter Zumthor’s astonishing thermal baths in the Alpine setting of Vals (1996). This powerful structure, seemingly hewed from the mountain rock, is as close as our age has come to an architecture of the senses. Dark, brooding, punctured and striated with delicate beams of light, the whole building is an antidote for a life spent in cyberspace and air-conditioned anonymity. Page 90: ‘The solution, however, is never as simple as combining the typologies, the functional and the luxurious. Hospitals, with their burgeoning superbugs and enormous costs, do not want patients to stay longer and linger. While the post-war hospital was predicated on lengthy recuperation … the hangover from the modernist notion of hospital as sanatorium, a place of cleanliness, light and fresh air – contemporary medical practice encourages anything which will reduce length of stay.
[FRANK GEHRYS MAGGIE IN DUNDEE] Page 120: ‘From beneath the grey metal roof pokes the warmth of the timber structure which envelops the visitors even before the building is entered … Inside the visitor is constantly aware of the complex timber structure which curves, folds and flares in every direction. Its scale keeps in intimate, and house-like … ‘Warm, cosy and rich yet not insular; it is a building which manages to look both inside and out.
GEHRY: Page 120: ‘I believe architecture can give a positive uplift,’ he replied. ‘It can engender life and optimism.’
Dundee Maggie Centre, Frank Gehry. Page 119.
Dundee Maggie Centre, Frank Gehry. Page 122.
Dundee Maggie Centre, Frank Gehry. Page 122.
Dundee Maggie Centre, Frank Gehry. Page 117.
[KIRKCALDY, FIFE; ZAHA HADID CENTRE] Page 127: ‘A long ramp sweeps visitors theatrically into the building. The structure takes you into its embrace – to enter it is a very deliberate decision, there are no fuzzy boundaries here. The route slowly removes the visitor from the grim environment, away from the hospital … and the feel begins to change.’ Page 132: ‘ ‘Once you step into the building,’ Zaha says, ‘You enter a completely different world. It is a kind of domestic space, it’s relaxing. Hospitals should not be like machines; they should have intimate spaces, places where patients can have a little time for themselves, to retreat into. Spatial experiences can elevate the spirits; it’s about how space can make you feel good’. Page 132: [Zaha speaking] ‘In a way it’s similar to the idea of the Finsbury Health Centre; it’s an architecture which is about well-being … Finsbury was a kind of agit-prop, propaganda for health, all glass and light … the need for light and the link between illumination and well-being’.
Fife Maggie Centre, Zaha Hadid. Page 134.
[LONDON; ROGERS STIRK HARBOUR & PARTNERS MAGGIE] Page 140: ‘The building’s striking orange wall refers, if tangentially, to the red brick of a municipal housing block opposite and, Jencks suggests, to the red used in the Chinese gardens beloved of Maggie herself. It is a restorative colour, optimistic and energising, but that same wall also sets up a protective barrier, enclosing and defining the intimate space inside. Implemented the first working log fireplace into this Maggies.
Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners Maggie Centre, London. Page 137.
Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners Maggie Centre, London. Page 138.
[FUTURE CENTRES] [COTSWOLDS MJP – SIR RICHARD MACCORMAC] Page 152: ‘The spa town of Cheltenham has its own history of healing … its founding coincided with the discovery of the healing properties of its waters’. Page 152: ‘is to create a garden to engage the senses, to use the therapeutic power of landscape and water’. Page 154: ‘with a couple of small retreats or ‘refuges’ housed in circular pods leading off it. Low, flat and clad in timber … it is one of the quietest and self-effacing of the centres. ‘It was important,’ MacCormac continues, ‘that the building should feel calm and domestic and be able to offer various situations which I hope would respond the visitor’s needs and expectations. It should provide a series of scenes responsive to the possible different frames of mind and moods.’ Page 154: ‘In a way the whole building is conceived as a series of cabinets, like a big piece of joinery. There are a series of refuges and an inglenook, which is in itself like a kind of house within a house, a refuge within the main room.’
Future Maggie Centre, Cotswolds. Page 152.
Future Maggie Centre, Cotswolds. Page 158.
***INTEGRATING NATURE*** [GARTNAVEL – OMA]
Page 180: ‘OMA project architect Richard Hollington explains that the design as driven by the idea of a refuge, a place differentiated from the hospital … Rather, though, than expressing that difference through sculptural form, roofscape or colour; the architects have employed an architecture of archetypal modernism, the minimal clarity of Mies, scrunched up into an intriguing cloister.’ Page 180: ‘The kind of architecture illustrated, the language of the modern villa … is very far indeed from the kind of cosiness for which the Maggie’s programme has come to be known. Page 182: ‘The simple, programmatic diagram of required spaces has here been spun around a courtyard and scrambled to make the best use of views, aspect, and the movement and progression through the building. The organising elements are the flat roof, which embraces the whole structure under a single plane, the courtyard garden at the building’s heart.’ Page 182: ‘The distribution of spaces stems directly from the initial diagram. The entrance is formed by a break between the two principal elements of the kitchen (defined here by a solid wall) and a large, flexible room. This … forms a porch, drawing visitors into the funnel of the entrance but also allowing a view straight through the structure to the courtyard garden.’ Page 182: [Maggie’s Centres are (stated by Hollington): ‘neither hospital, nor home, nor office, but something in between … to provide something the hospital can’t give – comfort, as opposed to serility and hygiene, flowing space not corridors, a connection to the outside, natural light. Page 184:‘Chosen specifically for its semi-wooded landscape and 180-Degree southerly aspect, the design takes advantage of the natural setting and potential of the site. The landscape surrounding and leading to Maggie’s highlights and elaborates on the green ‘natural’ aspect.’
Future Maggie Centre, Gartnavel. Page 183.
Future Maggie Centre, Gartnavel. Page 181.
Page 187: ‘The courtyard is at the heart of the building, with each room connected to it. The planting continues the same species as the exterior `but with different varieties of birch trees, ferns, mosses, whose large textures belie the small size of the courtyard. The effect is to limit the miniaturisation of this interior garden and relate to the exterior landscape while creating an unexpected space of heightened texture.
Future Maggie Centre, Gartnavel. Page 187.
(Heathcote E. and Jencks, C., 2010. The Architecture Of Hope' - Maggies Cancer Caring Centres. Frances Lincoln.)