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Maggie’s Centre, Aberdeen, Scotland

Snøhetta's pavilion at Forester Hill Hospital joins a series of small buildings designed to provide rest and respite for cancer patients.

Architect: Snøhetta AS
Published 12 Nov, 2013
 
Maggie's Centre, Aberdeen.

Maggie's Centre, Aberdeen.

Maggie's Aberdeen is located in the grounds of Forester Hill Hospital. It has no clinical functions, it is simply a retreat for cancer patients.

From the interior, looking towards the kitchen.

Maggie's provides an informal and inviting place to come and rest.

From the living room, with the interplay of the shell and the timber volumes within.

The concrete shell meets the floor.

The wooden box pokes through and becomes an outdoor terrace with access down to the garden.

Site plan.

Model showing how the garden is included in the embrace of the main form.

Plan level 1, ground floor.

Plan level 2, mezzanine of central timber box.

Section B-B.

Section D-D.

Completion: 2013

Address:
Westburn Road, Aberdeen, Scotland

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Photo:
Philip Vile, Neil Gordon

Maggie’s Centres are not treatment centres, but places where people diagnosed with cancer can meet and get help and counselling. In 2011, Snøhetta were invited to design the new Maggie’s Centre at Forester Hill Hospital in Aberdeen.

The centre is a freestanding pavilion at the end of a big field, which separates it from the rest of the hospital, but provides views and sunlight. The building is conceived as a simple, closed form, a shell, with strategic incisions giving access in three directions. The shell itself is a primitive three-layer structure of sprayed concrete, insulation and render.

In the centre of the internal space is a freestanding orthogonal core of oak, which divides the space into four parts, one part being an external garden space, still within the embrace of the main form.