‘A space of their own’: how cancer centres designed by top architects can offer hope
Maggie Keswick Jencks received her weekly breast cancer treatment in a windowless neon-lit room in Edinburgh’s Western general hospital.Her husband, the renowned landscape designer Charles, later described it as a kind of “architectural aversion therapy”.It was then, in the early 1990s, that the Scottish artist and garden designer imagined her own blueprint that would allow cancer patients “a space of their own” within the alienating, clinical confines of the hospital estate, one where they might “not lose the joy of living in the fear of dying”.The first Maggie’s Centre opened in Edinburgh in 1996, a year after her death, designed by Richard Murphy and housed in a converted stable block in the Western general grounds.Three decades on, there are more than 30 of these hospital-adjacent cancer support centres across the UK and overseas, and this legacy of conscious design is celebrated in a free exhibition at the V&A Dundee from Friday.
Welcome, colour, joy and proximity to nature are all part of Maggie’s unique design brief, which has since been interpreted by some of the world’s most acclaimed architects, including Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster and Benedetta Tagliabue,“Yet the centres all look wildly different,” says the curator Meredith More, “because there are infinite ways to address the brief creatively”,The exhibition contrasts the inviting glow of the wide, translucent glass facade at Barts, London, with Frank Gehry’s squat, homely design for Maggie’s Dundee, or the Oxford centre, which hovers off the ground like a treehouse, surrounded by saplings,Visitors to the exhibition can hear a background soundscape of interviews with centre users, describing their own impressions,“It’s a soundtrack of people talking about the power of beautiful space,” says More.
Scale models of some of the most striking centres crowd on to an eight-metre long kitchen table – a central component of the design brief,Kirsty Speers, who visited the Dundee centre after her own diagnosis at the age of 34, observes the “subliminal” effect of the table, where she found herself sharing intimacies with strangers, the “warmth and comfort” of the layered wood interior and the “mesmerising” art,But the first thing she noticed was the choice of seating at different heights,The ability to choose a comfortable and accessible chair was vastly more significant after major abdominal surgery,“They realise you need it before you do.
”Maggie’s chief executive, Dame Laura Lee – an oncology nurse who treated Maggie, shared her vision and worked with her family to realise it after her death – puts it simply: “These buildings are a statement of care.”Witnessing how patients behaved in the first centre in Edinburgh reinforced her certainty that architecture really did matter.“They started to tell me their deepest emotional concerns and it struck me that the building facilitated that”.Another tenet of Maggie’s original brief was that these centres should incorporate “zest”.“Even when facing a life-threatening illness or thinking we might die, in the moment we still need hope,” adds Lee.
“Even if it’s a distraction, if your eye is taken by a plant in the garden or a piece of art you’re not sure you like, life still has value in that moment,”
Ian Arnot obituary
My friend and former colleague Ian Arnot, who has died of cancer aged 45, was an LQBTQ+ activist, charity leader and fellow of the Chartered Institute of PR (CIPR). He was also a longstanding non-executive director in the charitable sector in Edinburgh, and served as BT’s head of corporate communications from 2020 to 2025.Ian became well known in media and political circles in Scotland and London during his 24-year career with BT Group. He was appointed a chartered fellow of CIPR in 2023, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the institute and the profession, and was elected vice-chair of CIPR Scotland in 2025. He was about to start a new role with the IHG hotel group at the time of his terminal diagnosis, which he bore with typical resilience, courage and hope
Iran war pushes oil price above $90 threatening rise in global inflation
The Iran conflict has driven the oil price past $90 a barrel to its highest weekly gains since the Covid-19 pandemic six years ago, threatening a fresh rise in global inflation.Reports that Kuwait had begun cutting production of oil at some fields after running out of space to store it drove the cost of a barrel of Brent crude to as high as $91.89 at one point on Friday – its highest since April 2024 and up from about $72.50 just before war broke out.The price of the international benchmark has surged by more than 25% since the US-Israel attack on Iran last weekend, its biggest weekly jump since the week to 3 April 2020
The Guardian view on AI in war: the Iran conflict shows that the paradigm shift has already begun
“Never in the future will we move as slow as we are moving now,” the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, warned this week, addressing the urgent need to shape the use of artificial intelligence. The speed of technological development – as well as geopolitical turbulence – is collapsing the distinction between theoretical arguments and real world events. A political row over the US military’s AI capabilities coincides with its unprecedented use in the Iran crisis.The AI company Anthropic insisted that it could not remove safeguards preventing the Department of Defense from using its technology for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. The Pentagon said it had no interest in such uses – but that such decisions should not be made by companies
Ben Affleck sells his AI postproduction startup to Netflix
Ben Affleck has sold his artificial intelligence company to Netflix in a surprise deal, saying he had been driven to embrace a technology that had initially “really scared” him.Netflix has acquired the postproduction startup InterPositive from the Oscar-winning actor, director, producer and screenwriter for an undisclosed sum.Affleck had kept InterPositive below the radar and had previously played down AI’s creative abilities. This year, he told the podcaster Joe Rogan he did not think the technology would be able to “write anything meaningful” or make films “from whole cloth”.However, in a video announcing the transaction, the Good Will Hunting and Gone Girl actor said he had moved from being scared of AI’s potential impact when he first encountered the technology to viewing it as a “really meaningful innovation”
Ireland v Wales: Six Nations rugby union – live
Brendan Fanning has been assessing Wales’s chances in this here fixtureGet in touch, why don’t you?I look forward to receiving your views on the action and more besides on the email. Keep them coming.Team news.Andy Farrell makes five changes to the team that humped England. In the backs, Jacob Stockdale comes in on the wing for the injured James Lowe
‘I believe I can do it’: George Russell favourite for F1 title as new era begins
With the long and increasingly febrile buildup almost at an end, Formula One is finally ready to go racing into the sport’s new era. Whether it will prove a success is one of many questions that will be answered at the season-opener in Melbourne this weekend, as will the most pressing concern: which team and driver enter this brave new world on top of the pile?In the paddock at Albert Park this week, teams and drivers increasingly had an air of the stony-faced stare-down of a cold war summit amid caginess about their prospects. No one wanted to give anything away nor make predictions.None of which has done anything to temper the palpable sense of excitement and anticipation in Melbourne, where the city is abuzz in the Victoria sunshine as fans flock to Albert Park. The genteel signs encouraging players to replace their divots on the park’s golf course, across which one of the many huge, vibrant fan areas sits, are dwarfed by huge banners of drivers, stages with bands and DJs around which fans congregate to eat and drink
Royal Mail criticised as first-class stamp price rises to £1.80 despite ‘failing service’
US lost 92,000 jobs in February just before Trump joined Iran conflict
BP’s new boss will take home at least £11.7m this year, more than double her predecessor
Rail passengers warned over six-day Easter shutdown on west coast mainline
‘We’re powerless … and hoping nothing hits us’: trapped on a tanker as Iran war escalates
US grants waiver to allow India to buy Russian oil amid Iran war