It is the latest in a series of cancer-care centres designed by leading architects. The centres are named after Maggie Keswick Jencks, the late wife of designer and architectural theorist Charles Jencks. The first Maggie’s Centre, designed by Sir Richard Murphy, opened in 1996 at the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh in a converted stone stable block. Other luminary architects that have designed Maggie’s Centres include Zaha Hadid (Fife); Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (London); and Wilkinson Eyre (Oxford). There are now 12 Maggie’s Centres in the UK, with eight more planned.
Particular to Maggie’s North East is a sheltered, sunken court on its south side, on to which all the main rooms open and a landscaped roof garden.
With sustainability at its core the building is low-carbon and low-energy, with grassy banks surrounding it to help with insulation, while pipes below the banks provide ground source heating and photovoltaic cells to provide electricity.
