Haven of hope and charity that will ease the burden of cancer

Maggie’s Gartnavel, located behind the Beatson Oncology Centre in Glasgow’s West End, is the eighth centre to be opened by the charity, providing a place for patients to go for information and advice to help them through their diagnosis and treatment.

The vision of Edinburgh cancer patient Maggie Keswick Jencks over 15 years ago, the charity now has 15 centres either open or in development across the UK.

The latest building, designed by architects Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon, continues Maggie’s tradition of innovative, attractive and unique sites.

The centre has wide open spaces, comfy decor and large glass windows looking on to carefully landscaped gardens, and the charity hopes users will feel able to relax and enjoy the time they spend there, no matter what they are going through with their cancer.

The centre, which has cost £3 million, including its running costs for the first two years, has been funded by grant-making charity Walk the Walk, with some of the money raised at the popular MoonWalk event in Edinburgh.

Maggie’s chief executive, Laura Lee, said the way the centre had a view over the Beatson and beyond gave patients “a sense of optimism and hope and rising above it”.

“People feel that it is a place that is safe and to gain support and courage, and be recharged with the fact that they can be hopeful in what is one of the biggest challenges they are likely to have faced,” Ms Lee said. The former cancer nurse, who cared for Maggie Jencks and helped to turn her ideas into reality after her death in 1995, said it was important that all the centres were so different, with their own characteristics and qualities.

“What we have done with Walk the Walk, is give the community of Glasgow – which in cancer terms is a vast community – a space that is unlike anywhere else and unlike any other Maggie’s centre,” she said.

“That is us telling them that they matter and are worth the effort and creativity that has gone into making this special environment.”

Nina Barough, chief executive and founder of Walk the Walk, praised the design of the new building.

“I love the open centre and the fact that it is very open,” she said. “You have the openness and yet you also have the intimacy, even though there is lots of glass.”

Maggie’s daughter, Lily Jencks, a landscape designer, took on the task of designing the gardens – the first time she has worked on a Maggie’s project.

“The idea of the building is that as you move around it you are always oriented to a different view of the landscape,” she said.

“When you walk in you see the courtyard, and in the rooms at the back you see the courtyard from a different view, so the idea was to create a continuous landscape and make you feel when you are in the building you are almost outside.”

Her father, Charles Jencks, proudly observing his daughter’s work yesterday, said without the landscape surrounding it, the building would appear too hard and cold.

“The landscape without the building would also be lacking, and I think it is a very happy marriage between the two of them,” Mr Jencks said. “It is so full of feeling what Lily has done here. Cancer is a problem that as you struggle with it your emotions are in so many places.

“This place has so much emotion in it,” he said. “This is a place where you can be apart and chat and relax.”