Maggie's Centres

- For the first time, this book illustrates the most important Maggie's Centres in UK with precise itineraries, showing the importance of their role and their architecture - The book's jacket opens out into a map marking the location of each center This guide traces the history of Maggie's cancer treatment centers and takes visitors to see how they have grown up in Britain and elsewhere to become a new type of institution; a paradigm for architecture. Founded by Maggie Keswick Jencks and Charles Jencks, both landscape designers and architects, each Maggie's Centre is a successful example of a hybrid of four buildings: it's a non-hospital institute, it's a kind of non-home house, a non-confessional religious refuge and a non-museum art gallery. However, it presents traces of all four typologies, used in a new way (C.J., 2018). In addition to the peculiarity of being a hybrid building, the success of the Maggie's Centre project seems to be crucial to the fact that, in order to carry out their work, the architects are provided, from the outset, with the Architectural Brief, where they find described not so much the technical and functional requirements, but rather the emotional and sensory states that the new building, intended for cancer patients and their relatives and friends, will have to guarantee. The buildings are and should all be of great visual impact due to their sophisticated architectural design, but at the same time be familiar with their domestic and welcoming spaces and should be able to encourage patients to support each other.
About the Author: Caterina Frisone is an architect and graduate of the Polytechnic of Milan. She is a visiting professor from Venice, where she practices and teaches at the University IUAV of Venice. Starting from 1992, she had been teaching with Francesco Venezia collaborating for almost twenty years in architectural design and teaching drawings and architectural representation within his course. Moreover, Caterina has taught architecture and urban design for numerous American architecture schools such as University of Maryland in Washington DC and Rome, Kent Stat U. in Florence, Syracuse U. in USA and Florence, Cornell U. in Rome, Catholic U. in Washington and Rome. Her research has focused on architecture, urban design, architectural representation, considering the academic work as the source for the real work. As a professional, she has built a Community Centre for the City of Venice and curated an exhibition for the MUVE in 2011. From 1999 to 2003 she was the program coordinator of the CUA Study Abroad Program in Rome and, in 2010, the Program Director of University of Maryland in Rome. In 2008 she launched the Master in Architecture of the Ship and the Yacht at the 54th Biennale of Architecture in Venice. Since 2012 she has been a member of the Cruise Venice Commettee in Venice. She has published articles and teaches thesys lab and portfolio design as a visiting professor.