FA14 Studio Maggie's Centre Design

I'm about one week into my second advance studio course/final undergraduate studio!! My professor this semester is Gary Grahm of GMI Architects . Our project this semester is called "Where Design Makes a Difference: Behavioral Healthcare Architecture". 

The focus of this project will be to use design to establish a new standard for the care abd treatment of people with behavioral health problems. 

As an introduction to this project we were asked by professor Grahm to look at a series of cancer centers located across Europe called Maggie's. The following excerpt about Maggie is taken from the Maggie's website..

"In May 1993, Maggie Keswick Jencks was told that her breast cancer had returned and was given two to three months to live.

She joined an advanced chemotherapy trial and lived for another 18 months. During that time, she and her husband Charles Jencks worked closely with her medical team, which included oncology nurse, Laura Lee, now Maggie’s Chief Executive, to develop a new approach to cancer care.

In order to live more positively with cancer, Maggie and Charles believed you needed information that would allow you to be an informed participant in your medical treatment, stress-reducing strategies, psychological support and the opportunity to meet other people in similar circumstances in a relaxed domestic atmosphere.

Maggie was determined that people should not “lose the joy of living in the fear of dying” and the day before she died in June 1995, she sat in her garden, face to the sun and said: “Aren’t we lucky?”

In November 1996, the first Maggie’s Centre opened in Edinburgh and what Maggie had planned became real."

He asked us to take Maggie's brief she left to the architects she worked with as to what a Maggie's Centre should be, and asked us to interpt it and create our own Maggie's Center. 

A Maggies Centre is a place that is supposed to feel more like a home than a hospital. Importance was given to the kitchen, group and private spaces, natural light and access to nature. My floor plan centers around the heart of the home, the kitchen. Surrounding it are two large group rooms that can be open to the rest of the space or closed off depending on the activity. The remaining spaces are either semi private or private rooms, where someone can go lie down and have a rest, or sit with a cup of tea from the kitchen and read a book. 

To render this quick sketch I used a Percise V5 RT 0.5mm Pilot Pen, and Faber Castle PITT Artist Pens in Landscape and Shades of Grey. This is actually the first type of sketch I've done like this and I'm very please as to how it came out. 

Let me know what you think!

-A