According to Angela Daniel, a support specialist at the new drop-in center for cancer patients at Manchester’s Christie hospital, “When people come into this building for the first time, they gasp. Then their shoulders drop and they visibly relax. Quite often, they start crying and ask, ‘Is this really all for me?’ ” Designed by Foster + Partners for Maggie’s, a charity that provides practical and emotional support in purpose-built settings, the center at the Robert Parfett Building is the antithesis of the sterile, strip-lit wards in which many patients receive medical treatment. It yokes the consistent concerns of Foster’s work—for light, landscape, and the beauty of technology—to a unique program developed by the charity’s late founder, Maggie Keswick Jencks, a cancer patient and wife of architecture critic Charles Jencks. Maggie’s buildings should be domestic in scale and character, with every detail considered in terms of its emotional impact, affirming the joy of life without ignoring patients’ fears.
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