Exhibition of Maggie's Centres at V&A Dundee shows how buildings can care

An exhibition of the 30-year history of charity Maggie's and its cancer care centres has opened at the V&A Dundee, displaying original models and drawings by world-famous architects, including the late Frank Gehry.

Maggie's: Architecture That Cares opened today in the Kengo Kuma-designed V&A museum in Dundee, with architectural objects detailing the more than 30 Maggie's Centres built in the UK and internationally.

The Maggie's charity has commissioned some of the world's most famous architects to design buildings that provide support to cancer patients and their families in a more homely setting than a typical hospital.

Among the pieces in the exhibition, which is on display until 1 November, are models and drawings of centres designed by Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers and the local Dundee Maggie's Centre by Frank Gehry.

"We hope that this is a catalyst for a conversation that design should be at centre stage," Maggie's CEO Laura Lee told Dezeen.

"This exhibition helps expose to people how design can care and how buildings can care – there's not enough conversation around it."

As a nod to Maggie's requirement that centres be designed around the kitchen table, an eight-metre-long table features at the centre of the exhibition space, displaying over 20 architectural models.

On one wall of the exhibition, pine plywood boards divide photos and drawings into five themes that reference factors in Maggie's design brief for its centres – welcome, beauty, home, nature and choice.

"We've taken some key themes from the [Maggie's] brief and shown how lots of the different centres achieve it," said V&A Dundee senior curator Meredith More.

"It was a wee bit risky showing them together like this, but we're not comparing and contrasting," she continued. "We're showing that there are infinite responses to this stimulus, and it can go on and on because the starting point is so strong."

"Hopefully it will also show that if more buildings in our public sector had these core principles, we would all be living, working and moving through better buildings."

Along another wall, plywood boards display objects detailing the early years of Maggie's. These include sketches by Scottish writer, artist and garden designer Maggie Keswick Jencks, who co-founded the charity with her husband, architecture critic Charles Jencks, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Keswick Jencks shared her vision for homely cancer care centres with oncology nurse Lee before passing away in 1995, a year before the first Maggie's Centre was completed in Edinburgh.

Lee and Jencks worked together for decades to continue Maggie's legacy until Jencks's death in 2019. Now, as Maggie's CEO, Lee wants to further spread the charity's ethos of the importance of architecture in influencing people's wellbeing.

As evidenced in the variety of models and drawings on display, each architect who has designed a Maggie's Centre has a different response to the same brief.

"If you go around the exhibition, yes, you look at the models of the physical objects, but what you'll see demonstrated is every detail that comes together to create that feeling of a place that cares," said Lee.

"It's interesting, the variety of the different buildings, yet how they welcome people in and how they make people feel is consistent," Lee continued. "We don't have to have homogeneity in the design process to get consistency of care."

At the entrance to the exhibition, a curved curtain encloses a video section, which plays interviews with people who have been regular visitors to Maggie's Centres.

Elsewhere, a seating nook informed by a similar space in a Maggie's Centre was added to the gallery, designed as a calming space for visitors who may be affected by cancer.

"We know there will be people who come who are right in it, who will have lost somebody or are holding on to their own stories, so we've borrowed some things from the Maggie's ethos," said V&A Dundee director Leonie Bell.

"The nook was designed directly out of a Maggie's building," she continued. "It's enclosed, you can sit in a comfy chair to create calm again. The way we're using the space is a little different for us."

The latest Maggie's Centres to be built include the Northampton centre, which features an angular metal roof designed by Stephen Marshall Architects, and a curving centre in London designed by Studio Libeskind.

In an interview with Dezeen last year, Lee spoke about how public interest in architecture has diminished in recent decades.

The photography is courtesy of V&A Dundee.

Maggie's: Architecture That Cares takes place from 6 March to 1 November 2026 at the V&A Dundee. For more up-to-date events in architecture and design around the world, visit Dezeen Events Guide.

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