Hasta La Ideas

Work starts today on Maggie’s Centre Gartnavel, a cancer-care facility in Glasgow, Scotland, designed by Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

The single-story building consists of a ring of interlocking spaces.

The facility is the latest in an ongoing series of Maggie’s Centres designed by leading architects. See our earlier story about the centre designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners.

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Here’s some more info from OMA:

Construction begins on Maggie’s Centre Gartnavel designed by OMA

Rotterdam, 9 November 2010 – Ground will be broken today for Maggie’s Centre Gartnavel, a facility in Glasgow providing emotional and practical support for people living with cancer, their families and friends. Designed by OMA, the building, which is located on the grounds of Gartnavel hospital and close to the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre, is one of several Maggie’s Centres in the UK and part of a pioneering project using thoughtful architecture and innovative spaces as tools for solace and healing.

OMA’s single-level, 534m2 building is a ring of interlocking, carefully composed spaces that provide moments of comfort and relief. With a flat roof and floor levels that respond to the natural topography, the rooms vary in height, with the more intimate areas programmed for personal uses such as counseling, and more open and spacious zones providing areas to gather and creating a sense of community.

Located in a natural setting, like a pavilion in the woods, the building is both introverted and extroverted: each space has a relationship either to the internal, landscaped courtyard or to the surrounding woodland and greenery, while certain moments provide views of Glasgow beyond.

The project, led by partners-in-charge Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon, and associate-in-charge Richard Hollington, will be completed in summer 2011. The Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres foundation, founded by Maggie Keswick Jencks and Charles Jencks, opened the first Maggie’s Centre in Edinburgh in 1996, and has since commissioned a series of innovative buildings designed by world class architects. The foundation approached OMA to design the Glasgow site in 2007.

On OMA
OMA is a leading international partnership practicing architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. The office is led by five partners – Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigematsu and Managing Partner, Victor van der Chijs – and employs a staff of around 220 of more than 35 nationalities. To accommodate a range of projects worldwide, OMA maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing, and Hong Kong.

Current projects under construction include the new headquarters for Rothschild bank in London, a major extension to the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University, the headquarters for China Central Television in Beijing, and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in southern China

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Office in the Woods by Selgascano	See all our stories on OMA	More architecture stories on Dezeen