MAGGIE'S LANARKSHIRE REIACH AND HALL

摘要

Maggie's Lanarkshire, dedicated as the Elizabeth Montgomerie Building, is a finely wrought house-and-garden tableau whose architecture has a spare Modernist-cum-Gaelic poetic quality; the cadences of threshold, space and atmosphere are rather beautiful. This is a setting for activity or repose whose qualities of engagement are the most engrossing of the five Maggie's cancer care centres I've visited. The full resonance of these qualities is not entirely obvious as you approach the building from the car park above it at Airdrie's Monklands Hospital, which contains the oncology centre for districts east of Glasgow. The low rectilinear form seems to signal a pure mid-20th century Modernism redux - Farnsworth, Case Study and a polite tap on the shoulder from J0rn Utzon's Courtyard Houses. But there is nothing preciously referential aboutthe architecture. Neil Gillespie describes the design as 'simply a tale of two enclosed gardens'. This, and a reference to the 'bare architecture armature', seems dutifully terse. Contextually, the scheme is a microcosmic walled estate, a wee metaphor for the Airdrie House estate on whose ghostland the Maggie's and the hospital stand.