Overview
“Cancer does kill of course – but fear, compounded by ignorance and false knowledge – is a paralysing attack in its own right. The myth of cancer kills as surely as the tumours.”
- Maggie Keswick Jencks, A View from the Front Line, 1995
This studio will examine the intersection between design and care, specifically modelling the brief around a new Kalida Maggieʼs Center) in the heart of Barcelona, a type of non-clinical cancer therapy building.
One need not be trained as an architect to know that the designs of hospitals are not driven by aesthetic considerations: function, specialization, efficiency are the impressions that come to mind when counting the endless rooms, floors and administrators that occupy these giant buildings. In fact, here in the United States, hospitals are also getting larger, and more machine-like: acquisitions and consolidations, innovating technological demands, and developing economies of scale, have continued to make sterile buildings, larger and even more de-personalized.
It was this very de-humanization, that Maggie Keswick Jencks faced with her own cancer diagnosis, and one that spurned the thirty-year project (and 30 buildings) of Maggieʼs Centres primarily across the UK and soon western-Europe.
A View from the Front Line, was written during her second cancer fight, in 1988, and which has come to be a manifesto for the organization. Her argument, and what has become a central tenet of Maggieʼs, is how to empower the person with cancer, in three distinctive ways: the first, is being able to provide the practical and useable information for visitors, the second is a program of emotional therapies, and third, individual and group psychological support. In 2015, Charles Jencks, her husband and architectural historian remarked of the Maggieʼs Centres that they are:
A hospital that is not an institution, a house that is not a home, a religious retreat that is not denominational, a place of art that is not a museum.
If hospitals are places where cancer is treated, Kalidas and Maggieʼs are everything the large institutions cannot be: rather than the body alone, they treat the person, the mind and the family. The centers are independent structures sited within their sister hospital grounds; they are non-clinical, informal, domestic buildings that support the practical, emotional and social aspects of cancer care. They are free and they are open to the community. And ultimately, they are places that believe in the transformative power of architecture.
Like Maggieʼs, this studio will examine the cultural thinking around care and architecture, and challenge its relationship toward thoughtful environments, inside and out. We will question the design nature of care, the robust, machine-like environments in our systems with “Waiting areas that could finish you off,ˮ as Maggie put it, and propose a counter narrative of grace and consideration. Or as Maggieʼs Architectural Brief puts it:
What we are looking for in our architects and our designers is an imagination and thoughtfulness which looks beyond the normal boundaries of function. We want them to show us how a building and a landscape can do the things we are asking of it (and more) without us having pre-conceived ideas about how they are going to do it.
Site
Where a contemporary hospital is now designed by hundreds of specialists and specific teams, with catalogs of pre-determined materials, and manuals of best practices, the Kalida center can instead approach an architecture truly of its place: Barcelona. The students should be interested in an architecture that reflects the cityʼs culture, passion and idealistic approach to design.
Site TBD.
Studio
In the spirit of the Architectural Brief from Maggieʼs Centres, that emphasizes a tactile experience, the expectation of this studio is with an emphasis on hands-on ideation: model building, collage-making, mockups, and mixed-media representation, will be part of an open discussion of process, and be part of mid and final reviews. Travel week will oblige students to keep a sketchbook as part of the Barcelona workshop.
During the first weeks of the studio, students will conduct collaborative research to better understand the Maggieʼs Centers, and provide analytical understanding of precedent buildings. Virtual meetings will take place that open the discussion of care with medical professionals.
Students are encouraged to watch Charles Jencksʼs opening lecture for the Maggieʼs Centre exhibition at the New York School of Interior Design, “Can Architecture Affect Your Health?ˮ and take a look at the corresponding exhibit at the Carnegie Museum. Additionally, students will watch the introduction to Caterina Frisoneʼs book, The Therapeutic Power of the Maggie’s Centre, who will speak with the studio in the first weeks of the semester.
Travel week will have a two-fold goal: shore up the studio expertise on the Kalida brief and absorb the Barcelona culture. The studio will travel to Barcelona to visit EMBTʼs recently finished, and the cityʼs first Kalida Center. There, we will meet with practitioners, staff, and administrators who will provide insight into the nature of their work. This initial visit will be buttressed by a visit to the project site.
Following the specific ventures into the studio brief, the remainder of the travel week will be dedicated to meeting architects working within similar typologies, visiting buildings of similar scale, and grasping the cultural cues of Barcelona to better understand design in the city. We will visit iconic projects in and around Barcelona, including work by EMBT, Ricardo Bofill, Antonio Gaudi, and Mies van der Rohe. The trip will conclude with a workshop at the EMBT studio.
Upon our return to the studio, students will individually work towards the design of a site and culture specific Kalida Center, addressing the needs of the program as well as the community nearby.
Program
Famously, the Maggieʼs Centre Brief is a short, living document that has only been adjusted a handful of times since the very first building - and it is that very brief 2015 version from which every Maggieʼs center starts, and that this studio will follow. There are no programmatically defined square footage, nor emphasis for one area over another - only the same list of program descriptions. Each student will pursue their own ideas and concepts and apply their unique vision for the Kalida center.
As such, the studio is specific and very open, and the goal is to have each project be wholly complete on all four of the main project aspects: the building, the landscape, the interiors, and the artwork that occupies the project.