| This fascinating
story of Maggie's, a unique cancer charity, began life in Edinburgh in 1996. In
1993, Maggie Keswick Jencks was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was told she
had three months to live. On hearing this devastating news she was left to sit on
a plastic chair in a hospital corridor. The only place she could find to cry
was a toilet cubicle. Her husband and co-founder Charles Jencks, said:
“I think that initial shock
was certainly the moment when Maggie thought we can do better than this. You
don’t have to suffer in a corridor on death row having just been told that you
are going to die. That was the moment architecture and medicine met in our
minds.”
In the the last year of her life, Maggie spent her time working on an idea for a cancer centre which she hoped
would change the lives of other cancer sufferers. Since her death the most
prominent names in architecture from Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry and
others have designed astonishing landmark buildings bearing her name. |
