Maggie’s Yorkshire Centre in Leeds, England by Heatherwick Studio

Article source: Heatherwick Studio

Maggie’s, the charity that provides free practical, emotional and social support for people with cancer and their family and friends, has been granted planning permission to build a new Maggie’s Centre in the grounds of St James’s University Hospital in Leeds. The Centre has been designed by Heatherwick Studio, founded in 1994 by Thomas Heatherwick.

Image Courtesy © Heatherwick Studio

• Architects: Heatherwick Studio 
• Project: Maggie’s Yorkshire Centre
• Location: Leeds, England

Image Courtesy © Heatherwick Studio

Working in partnership with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, the new Maggie’s Centre will provide free support for anyone living with cancer as well as their family and friends. The Centre, due to open in 2017, will enhance the cancer support already offered by Leeds Cancer Support at the Sir Robert Ogden Macmillan Centre, through Maggie’s evidence-based core programme of support. The Leeds Cancer Centre provides specialist cancer services to a population of around 2.7 million people across the Yorkshire region.

Laura Lee, Chief Executive of Maggie’s said: “We’re absolutely thrilled to have been granted planning permission to bring a Maggie’s Centre to Yorkshire. Creating a calm and uplifting environment to enable us to be able to provide our programme of support to people living with cancer is incredibly important and Heatherwick Studio’s wonderful design will allow us to do just that.

Image Courtesy © Heatherwick Studio

“The Leeds Cancer Centre sees over 12,500 people newly diagnosed with cancer per year and we will aim to provide the highest quality of cancer support to the patients of St James’s University Hospital and their families.” Dr Linda Pollard, Chair of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said: “I am delighted that the plans for the new Maggies Centre here in Leeds are progressing so well. This is a significant milestone on the way to bringing this superb facility to complement our existing cancer services for patients from across the region.

“There is much work still to do but the signs are extremely promising and we are greatly looking forward to working with the team from Maggies to make their vision a reality.”Sara Elhassani from Chapel Allerton in Leeds said: “When I was first diagnosed with secondary breast cancer there was an overriding sense that I was no longer in the land of the living, that I had been dismissed almost, pushed to the edge of the living world. It’s a horrible, scary feeling.

Image Courtesy © Heatherwick Studio

“After visiting the Maggie’s Centres in Newcastle and Nottingham I felt a very strong need for the support the charity provides for all cancer types – somewhere you can just drop in and don’t have to book. The more your condition deteriorates the more support you need. You know what the end of the road looks like and it’s not nice. It’s devastating for you and your family. As cancer patients we spend much of our lives at the oncology department so it’s important to have support close by on the hospital grounds. It’s lovely to have somewhere to drop in whenever you choose.

“Maggie’s Centres are wonderful places for making you feel that you’re still part of the human race, that you belong and are able to be yourself. I’m so pleased to hear there will be one in Yorkshire providing vital support for those who need it across the region.”Maggie’s Yorkshire has been designed by Heatherwick Studio who, as one of Britain’s most innovative design practices, were selected to design the Centre at St James’s University Hospital as the site demands a high degree of ingenuity to create the calm, uplifting environment so important to the people who visit and work in Maggie’s Centres. Heatherwick Studio’s work includes the award-winning UK Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010, the Olympic Cauldron for the London 2012 Olympic Games, and the New Bus for London.

Image Courtesy © Heatherwick Studio

Thomas Heatherwick of Heatherwick Studio said: “We’re delighted to be working with Maggie’s to bring a Centre to Yorkshire and to have the opportunity to create a positive environment for users and staff. The site is a small patch of green surrounded by the huge volumes of the existing hospital buildings. Instead of taking away the open space we wanted to make a whole building out of a garden.”

To complement Heatherwick Studio’s design, the surrounding gardens are designed by award-winning landscape designers Marie-Louise Agius and Michael Balston of Balston Agius. Maggie’s Centres are warm and welcoming places with qualified professionals on hand to offer a programme of support that has been shown to improve physical and emotional well-being. The support available at the new Maggie’s Yorkshire Centre will include psychological support, benefits advice, nutrition workshops, relaxation and stress management, art therapy, tai chi and yoga.

There are already 18 Maggie’s Centres across the UK, online and abroad and all are designed by leading architects. Each architect offers a unique interpretation of the same brief, based on the needs of a person living with cancer, to create the calm environments so important to the people who visit and work in the Centres. Maggie’s relies on voluntary donations to support and grow its network of Centres and to develop its unique, high quality programme of support. Maggie’s Yorkshire needs £5 million to create the Centre with money raised entirely from voluntary donations.

About Maggie’s

Maggie’s offers free practical, emotional and social support to people with cancer and their family and friends. Built in the grounds of specialist NHS cancer hospitals, Maggie’s Centres are warm and welcoming places, with qualified professionals on hand to offer a programme of support that has been shown to improve physical and emotional wellbeing.
Great architecture is vital to the care Maggie’s offers; and to achieve that Maggie’s works with great architects like Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, whose expertise and experience deliver the calm, uplifting environments that are so important to the people who visit and work in the Centres.
The first Maggie’s Centre opened in Edinburgh in 1996. There are now 18Centres across the UK, online and abroad, with more planned for the future.
Maggie’s relies on voluntary donations to support and grow its network of Centres and to develop its unique, high quality programme of support. The charity’s aim is to make the biggest difference possible to people living with cancer and their family and friends.
 2016 marks Maggie’s 20th anniversary.
 Maggie’s President is HRH The Duchess of Cornwall.
 For further information about Maggie’s please go to www.maggiescentres.org

About Heatherwick Studio
Heatherwick Studio was founded by Thomas Heatherwick in 1994. A team of over 170 architects, designers and makers work from a combined studio and workshop in Kings Cross, London.
The studio’s current projects includes the Garden Bridge in London, two large scale developments in Shanghai, a museum of contemporary African art in Cape Town and a park in Abu Dhabi. Recently completed projects include a distillery in the south of England and a new multi-use university building in Singapore.
The work of Heatherwick Studio has been the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The studio’s work is currently the subject of two touring exhibitions in Asia and North America.
In 2012, ‘Thomas Heatherwick: Making’ was published, a monograph that presents an extensive survey of the studio’s output to date. A new revised and expanded version of the book was published in July 2015.
In 2004, Thomas Heatherwick was the youngest practitioner to be appointed a Royal Designer for Industry, in 2010 he was awarded the London Design Medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to design and in 2013 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the design industry. Heatherwick Studio’s projects have won multiple RIBA awards, Civic Trust awards and a Gold Award for pavilion design for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
Thomas Heatherwick has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the Royal College of Art, University of Dundee, University of Brighton, Sheffield Hallam University and University of Manchester. In 2013 he was elected a Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Tags: England, Leeds

Categories: Social Centre, Social welfare

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