Daniel Libeskind’s Royal Free Maggie’s Centre – ADC

At the Royal Free Hospital in Belsize Park, north London, the capital’s third Maggie’s Centre has opened. Designed by Daniel Libeskind, the centre adopts a curvaceous timber form which fans out to create various openings, including a double-height ground floor kitchen area.

Weathered, grey LVL timber panels clad the structure with slanted windows puncturing the façade at various points. The angled façade spirals out of the ground in plan, away from the centre of the building, helping to create daylight-filled spaces on the floors above.

This is a response to the building’s site: a car park. “This is the most challenging site we’ve had,” Laura Lee, chief executive of the Maggie’s Trust, who has been the client of every Maggie’s building with the exception of Edinburgh (where Maggie Jencks was the client herself), told Architecture Today. “It’s a place with no light and we’re not on the main road like other [Maggie Centres], we’re out of sight.”

Libeskind, also speaking to AT, shared the sentiment. “This was an incredibly constrained site, we occupy half a car park, so this project had to be all about light.”

“I was very close with Charles Jencks, and we had spoken many years ago about doing a Maggie’s Centre – I was one of the first to be asked to do one,” he continued. “But it’s taken a while to realise!” (Libeskind was formally commissioned in 2017.) “Many of my other projects before this have been memorials which deal with immense tragedy. Yet this is a building about life – and in many ways those typologies are linked, they inform each other.”

“I discussed the idea a lot with Charles before he died. The idea is to create a great sense of calm, amid the storm of a patient’s diagnosis. And so that manifested as creating a welcoming form which has been designed to bring light into all the spaces.”

The building is small, less than 500 square metres in size. “Qualities of light and scale – domestic scale – were very important,” added Libeskind.

True to Maggie’s ethos of the kitchen being the focal point of each centre, here at the Royal Free it doubles-up as an informal lobby, partly defined by a flowing staircase which hugs the curvilinear façade upwards to the floor above. The kitchen has been strategically located at the entrance between two doors, looking out to a landscaped garden and directly connected to the main staircase which follows the façade upwards. When entering from the car park, patients are greeted by these stairs and views up into the mezzanine level above, while curved walls hint at the living room around the corner.

There are, in fact, three entrances at the ground level: two place you immediately in the kitchen-dining area. “The levels of the building are linked right away. When you arrive, you’re invited to use the whole building instantly,” Libeskind went on.

Meanwhile, a third entrance leads to a ‘living room’. The aim here with so many entrances – for what is quite a small building – is to allow people to come and go quietly should they wish to do so, rather than announcing any arrival or departure. “You don’t want to encounter a big lobby or someone at a desk,” said Libeskind.

Lee was also keen to stress how spaces within have been designed to be adaptable. “More and more people are getting a cancer diagnosis, so more people are coming through our doors. Which means our buildings have to support that growth by providing flexible spaces.”

The kitchen is surrounded by intimate seating areas and the curved feature staircase leads to communal areas, private spaces, and staff areas above. A library, incorporating timber cladding, creates a ‘living room’ ambiance for reading, meetings, and art, enhanced by an environmentally friendly bio-ethanol hearth. Here, a curtain by artist Petra Blaisse can be used to shut off this space – a feature which can be found an all levels to create private areas should need be.

“We asked ourselves, what would you do in your own home? Not what you would do at an institution? It was important to be distinguished from the hospital fabric and scale,” added Carla Swickerath, partner at Studio Libeskind.

Moments of privacy are also created by the building’s form, with the curvilinear shapes in plan forming rounded alcoves which are filled with seating.

“It’s a building that’s in the round, there’s not front or side elevation; it’s not just a box with some holes in it – you’re in a building that’s 360 degrees,” noted Libeskind.

On the first floor, a counselling room and a multipurpose yoga room have been included, while above, a pavilion and landscaped roof terrace planted with medicinal herbs create a peaceful retreat, with the pavilion providing group seating and space for, reading and games.

The landscaping was designed by Martha Schwartz Partners, who specified a mix of soft and hardscape elements, including quiet seating and connections to existing walkways on the Royal Free Hospital campus. Trees from nearby woodland have been used to create an intimate and soothing outdoor environment similar to Hampstead Heath, while a ‘ripple wall,’ inspired by serpentine walls, traces the site’s perimeter and mimics the building’s curvilinear form, with its undulations doubling as pockets for seating.