RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist: Maggie’s Lanarkshire

UK Construction Media takes a closer look at Maggie’s Lanarkshire, the RIBA National Award winning healthcare building, shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize.

Designed by Reiach and Hall Architects, Maggie’s Lanarkshire was opened in September 2014. Situated at the Elizabeth Montgomerie Building at Monklands Hospital in Airdrie, the £1.8M centre provides a core system of support to help improve the physical and emotional wellbeing of cancer patients during treatment and recovery.

Neil Gillespie of Reiach and Hall Architects commented on designing for Maggies: “A Maggie’s brief is challenging for many reasons, it is a unique building type. A Maggie’s is all about a different kind of care, a care that is dispensed from a domestic scaled building yet it is not a house nor is it a hospital nor is it a church.

“Virtually all Maggie’s plans evolve from the kitchen table; around having somewhere to go to the moment you enter the building. Our plan too develops from the kitchen table outwards to the courtyards, the trees and beyond.”

Maggie’s Lanarkshire (c) David Grandorge

Should Maggie’s Centre win the RIBA Stirling Prize, it would mark the second time that a Maggie’s cancer care centre has won the award.

RIBA describes Maggie’s Centre as “A respite from the clinical atmosphere and built form of the nearby hospital, this is a place of relaxation and contemplation.

‘This new Maggie’s Centre is on the old Airdrie House estate, which was enclosed by a belt of lime trees and some of which still survive. A new surrounding wall of Danish hand-made brick recaptures this sense of “paradise” – literally walled enclosure – offering a degree of separation from nearby hospital grounds. It conceals a modest, low building that gathers a sequence of domestic-scaled spaces.

‘Visitors enter a quiet arrival court, defined by the low brick walls and two lime trees. At once, a sense of dignity and calm is encountered. A linear rill, a spring, animates the space with the sound of running water. External courts catch sunlight, creating sheltered ‘sitooteries’.’

The winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize will be announced in October.

Maggie’s Lanarkshire (C) Tricia Malley Ross

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