Comfort zone

摘要

Frank Gehry's Maggie's Centre at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, is the third of the pioneering support centres for cancer sufferers to open in Scotland. The charity's Scottish launch reflects the close connections of the late Maggie Keswick Jencks with Scotland (although the 10 further centres at various stages include six in England and one in Wales). Leading Scottish architects were selected: the Maggie's Centre in Edinburgh (opened in 1996, then extended - AJ 20.9.01) is by Richard Murphy; in Glasgow (opened last year) it is by Page and Park. In both cases, existing, redundant hospital buildings were imaginatively converted/extended to provide the requisite facilities. Maggie's Centres supplement the work of the hospitals to which they are attached, offering patients and their families the support - a place to see a counsellor, share a coffee or a meal, or just talk to people who face similar problems - that Maggie Jencks found lacking when she was diagnosed with a recurrence of the cancer that eventually killed her. Her husband, Charles Jencks, a leading light in the Maggie's Centres initiative, insists that 'for people in this situation, time is everything. Maggie was given three months to live. She lived for two more, really worthwhile, years and that mattered so much for us and for her children and family.