In black and light

SUSAN MANSFIELD
IN A CORNER of the car park at Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital, the newly finished Maggie’s

Centre sparkles like a black diamond in the autumn sun. The work of leading contemporary architect Zaha Hadid, it makes a striking contrast with the concrete tower-block of the main hospital, which looms behind.
This latest in the network of Maggie’s Cancer Centres is officially opened tomorrow by local MP, Gordon Brown. On Monday it opens for business, welcoming those suffering from cancer, their friends and family, providing information and support – or just a place to be.
While the striking dark colour – perhaps a reference to Fife’s coal mining heritage – and clean diagonal lines signal its distinctiveness from the outside, the interior yields a surprise. There the predominant colour is white, the jagged lines replaced by soft curves.
It is only as you enter the building that you become aware of its unique location: though it backs on to the hospital car park, it faces onto a secluded dell surrounded by mature trees. The valley is being transformed into a wildflower meadow. From the long sun-filled terrace, it is hard to believe a busy hospital is only yards away.
The building is full of light, the sun streaming in through the windows looking onto the dell. Triangular openings in the walls and ceiling pour light into the seating areas, kitchen space, meeting rooms. It is pure without being clinical, a haven of tranquility.
All Maggie’s Centres are situated in the grounds of major hospitals, but aim to create an atmosphere which is domestic rather than institutional. Visitors can, quite literally, shut the door on the hospital and find space to gather their thoughts, ask questions, seek advice or just be alone.
The centres were the brainchild of Maggie Keswick Jencks, who was treated for cancer at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh in 1993, but died in 1995. The first Maggie’s opened in Edinburgh in 1996, and now welcomes around 80 visitors a day. The Fife centre is the fifth in Scotland; seven more are in the pipeline across the UK.
Many centres are the work of leading architects who were personal friends of Maggie and her husband, Charles, such as Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind. Zaha Hadid studied with Maggie at the Architectural Association in London, where Jencks was a lecturer, and remained a friend until Maggie’s death.
Hadid says: “Anybody who knew Maggie felt at home in her presence. She had a unique ability to make everyone feel special by giving them the time and space to express themselves and be themselves.
“As a friend of mine, it was important this unique quality was in some way translated into my design for Maggie’s Fife. I hope that the look and feel of the centre in some way enhances the visitor’s experience and provides a warm and welcoming place for them to relax and access the support they need.”
Hadid says she felt “deeply privileged to be able to contribute to society with something like this” and explains: “I wanted to do this building as an architecture of well-being, to make people feel good, where they can talk, chill out, feel human. I really don’t think well-known architects should only do the iconic projects. I think there is also a demand to revisit and rethink housing, hospitals and schools as this hasn’t been reconsidered for several generations.”
Laura Lee, chief executive of Maggie’s Centres, had qualms about the design at first, but was “surprised and delighted by the exterior”. She adds: “It sits snugly in the little valley and inside it’s curvy, gentle and soft. I think it’s exactly the right atmosphere. In summer the dell will be bursting into life. It’s a little gem, especially when the sun hits it.”
Hadid explains how she approached the project: “I wanted to build a very humble building with no architectural gymnastics, a small pavilion jutting on the edge of hill to contrast with the severity of the hospital. Within the space, I thought one could really rethink the idea of individual spaces for consultation. Maggie’s Centres have opened up the idea of healthcare, of an architecture that can make people feel better.”
The £1 million centre has been five years in the making. Apart from £400,000 National Lottery Fund grant, all the money has been raised by the people of Fife. The challenge is far from over as the centre needs £250,000-£300,000 a year to cover its running costs. Readers of The Scotsman can find out tomorrow how to help.
Elizabeth Adams, fundraising co- ordinator for Maggie’s Fife, says: “The public of Fife took the concept to their hearts, it was really awe-inspiring. We got some big donations, but the main amount of money was raised by coffee mornings, sponsored walks, donations in lieu of flowers at funerals, or instead of wedding gifts or birthday gifts.”
Staff and volunteers are busy preparing for the opening. There are New Home cards perched on a shelf; cushions, throws and tapestries will soon help to fill the space with welcoming colours. But the kettle has been unpacked, along with the central feature of all Maggie’s, the large kitchen table. The aim is to welcome everyone to the centre with a friendly face and cup of tea. “The kitchen is the hub, where people sit and blether,” says Adams. “They can talk about anything from what they did last night to how they’re coping with side-effects of their cancer treatment.
“Tea and coffee is such a small thing, but being able to make yourself a cuppa gives you back a little bit of control.” On one side of the long white dining table, there are offices and meeting rooms, each unique in size and shape, with smart contemporary chairs – in black and white. Curved white doors blend into the fabric of the building. They will be kept open at all times when the rooms aren’t in use. An open door – literally and metaphorically – is a key part of the Maggie’s Centres’ ethos.
There are two library areas, where visitors can browse and borrow books and pamphlets, and computers where they can surf for further information. As well as being open every day for people to drop in, the centre will offer courses on living with cancer and seminars on subjects such as nutrition and relaxation.
Centre manager Ruth McCabe is delighted with the building and believes it will supplement the treatment and help people receive at the hospital next door: “Maggie felt she was getting very good physical care from the NHS – it was the social, psychological, spiritual dimension where she struggled to get her needs met. Maggie’s has a wider vision of holistic care. We want to offer help and support, as well as anything that helps people to express themselves and release tensions, anything to help them feel better and manage their cancer journey more effectively.
“The Maggie’s Centre belongs to the people of Fife – they raised the money, it is their building, their centre. We’re simply hoping people will come and visit.” From Monday, the door is open.
The architect
SHE IS known and acclaimed throughout the world, but the Maggie’s Centre in Kirkcaldy is Zaha Hadid’s first design to be built in the UK. The work of the 55-year-old has been described as “dynamic, theatrical, fearlessly experimental”. For a long time many of her ideas existed only on paper as they were deemed impossible to build. Now, however, she is the most famous woman in her profession.
Hadid was born in Iraq and took a degree in Maths at the American University in Beirut before arriving in London in the early 1970s to study at the Architectural Association. Charles Jencks was one of her teachers, his wife-to-be, Maggie Keswick – later to be the inspiration for Maggie’s – a fellow student.
Hadid stepped into the spotlight in 1982 when she won a competition to design a leisure club in Hong Kong. The Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany, cemented her reputation as a daring talent to watch. Other major works include the tram station in Strasbourg, the Contemporary Arts Centre in Cincinnati and the Phaeno Centre, a science museum in Wolfsburg, Germany. Hadid won a Pritzker, the architecture world’s Nobel Prize, in 1994, and the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2003, and was shortlisted for this year’s Stirling Prize.
She has also designed furniture, a tea set for Alessi, a handbag for Louis Vuitton and even a hydrogen-powered car.
At home in Britain, however, her ideas were less well-received. In 1994 she won a contract to design an opera house in Cardiff, but at the last minute the project was halted and a Welsh architect appointed. Now all that is changing. Hadid’s busy practice is working on more than 50 projects around the world, including several in Britain: the HQ for the Architectural Foundation in Southwark; an aquatic centre for the 2016 London Olympics; and new Glasgow Transport Museum.
An expert’s view
‘As intricate as an origami paper cut made in cement’
WHEN Maggie Jencks was diagnosed with cancer, she devoted the last few months of her life into setting up daycare centres for cancer outpatients. The first, outside Edinburgh’s Western General, opened posthumously, on 7 November 1996. Today, Maggie’s Centres attached to NHS hospitals are opening all over Britain, designed by the world’s greatest architects who share her original vision. The latest is this little gem of a pavilion, as intricate as an origami paper cut made in cement. It opens at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife, tomorrow when Gordon Brown invites the world’s press to judge it – followed on Monday by the intended audience: cancer patients, their families and friends.
The architectural groupies will attend because it is the first building in Britain to be built by internationally-acclaimed Zaha Hadid, who won the Pritzker Prize, the architects’ equivalent of the Oscars. She waived her fees for the project, saying: “What was really nice about Maggie was that she reminded people that throughout their tragedy they can think of the well-being of others.”
Cancer touches every family in Britain, directly or indirectly. Each year, one in three of us will be diagnosed with cancer. Can something as down-to-earth as a building bring hope to all of us at a time when things seem hopeless?
With great sensitivity and sleight of hand with the set square, Hadid sets out to show us that it can. She has interpreted Maggie Jencks’s wish-list for daycare centres to make them hospitable, the one thing that hospitals cannot achieve.
Like an enveloping arm, a curvaceous ramp, for those who may be running out of puff after chemotherapy, leads from the hospital car park to an angular black building perched above a hollow that will be carpeted with wild flowers in the spring.
The triangle is the building’s leitmotif, not just stylistically, as the soaring triangular pitch of the roof creates a haven from wind and rain, as well as a great view on both sides. Outside, sharp edges; inside, curves in an all-white luminous space. Triangular skylights track the sun to beam moving patterns of light on the floor, and the roof and wall lights are designed by Hadid to flatter. It is like stepping into a nautilus shell.
“Integral to the centre is the feeling of openness within a soft interior space that you can wander around,” says Hadid. At the hub of the new centre is the kitchen where tea and biscuits are dispensed, as is dietary advice. The first kitchen ever to be displayed in the Guggenheim Museum in New York – in a retrospective on Zaha Hadid – was her Z.Island. She used the same material here for an all-white kitchen curved at the corners.
The biggest step for most cancer outpatients will be to cross the threshold. The kitchen is pivotal to that welcome. The rest of the space adapts to the needs of the visitor. There are mirrored seating areas where patients can try wigs and learn make-up. There are group areas, for Tai Chi sessions and Look Good Feel Better programmes. Private areas offer access to clinical psychologists and financial advice.
This trapezoidal block, set in a hollow below the hospital, is an elevating building, designed to let its occupants find their own way through a problem.
• Nonie Niesewand is an architectural writer and author of Contemporary Details: The Definitive Interior Design Sourcebook (HarperCollins US, 2016).