Maggie's Centre Leeds - Building Centre

Selected by

Dame Joanna Lumley, Actor/writer/presenter

Joanna Lumley DBE FRGS is an English actress, presenter, former model, author, television producer, and activist. Lumley’s breakthrough role was as Purdey in The New Avengers (1976), a role for which over 800 girls auditioned. Purdey propelled Lumley to instant fame. It was her reinvention as a comic actress in Absolutely Fabulous that shot Lumley to wider international acclaim and is regarded as one of the greatest female comic performances ever. In 2013 she received the Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards, and in 2017 was honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship. Her most recent work on television is the series Great Cities of the World and her book A Queen for All Seasons has just been published, celebrating HM the Queen on her Platinum Jubilee. She was made a Dame (DBE) in the 2022 New Year’s Honours for services to drama, entertainment and charity.
Location

St James’s University Hospital, Alma Street, Leeds, LS9 7BE
Contact

leeds@maggies.org · 0113 4578364
Architecture

Heatherwick Studio.
Construction manager Sir Robert McAlpine
www.heatherwick.com

Heatherwick Studio was commissioned to design a new centre at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds. Jimmy’s, as it is known locally, is Europe’s largest teaching hospital and home to the Leeds Cancer Centre, which serves a diverse community across Yorkshire. The brief was to create “a home that people wouldn’t dare build for themselves” to welcome an expected 110 visitors each day.

The site chosen for the new centre was the last patch of greenery at the hospital – a grassy hill next to the car park, bounded by roads on two sides and surrounded by large buildings. The six-metre difference in level across the site would typically dictate a building dug into the slope –instead, the studio chose to follow its natural contours, so that at the highest point, visitors would have views of the Yorkshire Dales, and a connection with the world beyond the hospital.

The pillars of support at Maggie’s are the counselling rooms, so these were placed, like three pavilions, organised around a heart and at changing levels of the slope. The roof is composed of three overlapping gardens which step down and overhang to shelter communal areas. In this way, the hospital does not lose its last green space – it is lifted up, filled with woodland plants and made more accessible and inviting.
Inside, visitors are not confronted by a conventional reception space; instead, they find a welcoming window seat, a noticeboard, and a view through to the heart of the centre, with its communal table in the arc of a staircase leading to the kitchen. The kitchen table, a feature of all Maggie’s centres, represents another threshold; the point where visitors feel ready to share their experiences.
Interesting facts

The studio worked with landscape designers, Balston Agius to develop the gardens. Given the shade cast on the site from adjacent buildings, the high winds and local weather, the planting is based on the British woodland, with hardy native species of plants that support the area’s existing biodiversity. The garden is deliberately lush – Maggie herself was a gardener, and understood how calming and restorative it could be to pick up one of the tools left for visitors and get to work.
Resources

Heatherwick Studio

...Thomas has given London, indeed Britain and the world, glorious buildings, magical spaces that capture his amazing abilities to build spaces that celebrate our world...

I got to know Thomas Heatherwick just after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and we talked about Thomas creating a garden bridge across the Thames to be a wonderful memorial for her life. Though that memorial did not come to pass, this amazing idea did not go away and years later the garden bridge idea, no longer a memorial, but a fantastic gift to London, indeed the world, was proposed, but it was not to be. However Thomas has given London, indeed Britain and the world, glorious buildings, magical spaces that capture his amazing abilities to build spaces that celebrate our world, from buildings to gardens, even a new Routemaster bus.

To choose between his British work is so difficult , the Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross, the Bombay Sapphire Distillery in Whitchurch, Google’s new offices also in King’s Cross. But the Maggie’s Centre in Leeds that Thomas has built, for people with cancer, stands out as something very special.

Maggie’s Centre, Leeds, is sited within the campus of St James’s University in Leeds. Apparently it’s the first time Heatherwick’s had been involved in a healthcare project, and it’s a triumph.

Designed as a group of three planters, each with a counselling room, it’s built on a sloped site and has a magical rooftop garden. Inspired by Yorkshire woodland and featuring native English plants and evergreens, the garden references Maggie Keswick Jencks love of gardening. Maggie’s Centres were created by Maggie and her brilliant husband, Charles Jencks who both loved gardening, and the idea is that visitors will feel encouraged to participate in the care of all the bulbs and plants on the site.

“Our aim was to build a home for people affected by cancer that would be soulful and welcoming, unlike other typical clinical environments,” said Thomas Heatherwick. “By only using natural, sustainable materials and immersing the building in thousands of plants, there was a chance for us to make an extraordinary environment capable of inspiring visitors with hope and perseverance during their difficult health journeys.”

The interior of the centre explores everything that’s often missed in healing environments: natural and tactile materials, soft lighting, and a variety of spaces designed to encourage social opportunities as well as quiet contemplation. I love the fact that window sills and shelves are intended for visitors to fill with their own objects to create a sense of home. And of course at the heart of the Centre is the kitchen, and more social spaces for group activities.

I can’t think of a more fitting way to acknowledge the work of Thomas Heatherwick than seeing what he and his team have created here.

Maggie’s Centre Leeds

...Thomas has given London, indeed Britain and the world, glorious buildings, magical spaces that capture his amazing abilities to build spaces that celebrate our world...

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