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Executive Summary // Part One: preparatory research about Maggie >>
Landscape architect Maggie Keswick Jencks was in 1993 told her former breast cancer had returned and spread to her bone marrow, liver and brain. The doctor estimated she had 2-3 months to live. She lived for another 18 months. During that period she developed a blueprint for a new type of cancer care facilities that would provide a new approach towards the person affected by cancer. Only a year after her passing, the first centre in Edinburgh opened. Today 18 centres are built in Scotland, England and HongKong, with several more in the pipeline1. Since the opening of the first centre in 1995, the Maggie’s network have grown into an international organisation founded by the Maggie Keswick Jencks Cancer Caring Centres Trust. When planning a new centre, the foundation hands the architect an extensive brief of how they expect the architecture to perform. In it, one can read:
theory research >>
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”These buildings and gardens, the way they are furnished, the art on the walls or in the garden, are designed to help people draw on strengths they may think they no longer have. We want Maggie’s to kindle people’s curiosity and imagination, to nudge them towards possibilities beyond being “just another cancer patient.”
If people are going to live, they need to feel as if they, not cancer, are in charge of their lives.”2
The impact on psychology and mental health that architecture might bring is further discussed by Charles Jencks, architecture critic and historian - as well as husband to Maggie Keswick Jencks - in the book The Architecture of Hope. In the chapter ”Cancer, Hope and Fear” Jencks investigates the importance of patient empowerment. He quotes his late wife’s concern that ”the problems of living in the age of overchoice are that so much information is irrelevant to your particular cancer.” Information guidance by experienced professionals, to have someone to discuss options with, became the mainstay of the programme at the Maggie’s Centres. Jencks continues to discuss the influence of mindset, and compares hope to a chain that needs renewal not to be broken by negative evidence and feeling ill, turning hope into hopelessness.3 One should not misinterpret Jencks emphasis on mental attitude as a banal alternative to healing cancer, nor that it actually can af-