Annual conference 2014 - charles jencks

Topic: The Architecture of Hope

Charles Jencks

The Architecture of Hope focuses on an exciting building project that has been underway since the mid-1990s - new cancer caring centres that offer a fresh approach to both architecture and health.  Named after Maggie Keswick and co-founded with her husband, Charles Jencks, these centres aim to be situated at all the major British hospitals that treat cancer.  The Maggie’s Centres are committed first to helping cancer sufferers help themselves, to inspiring carers to care more,  and secondly to architecture. It is the arts and building, important allies in the perennial struggle with cancer, that lead to the ‘architecture of hope’.

As people walk into a centre after a diagnosis, or enervating treatment, often disoriented and lacking in self-confidence, they enter another world which acknowledges their importance and a basic condition that may become prevalent: living with cancer and not losing hope.

Born in America, Charles Jencks has lived and worked in Britain for the past four decades where his designs are found in both buildings and sculptural landscapes. He is co-founder of Maggie's Centres - a series of practical and beautifully-designed buildings dedicated to empowering people to live with, through and beyond cancer.