Building study
D 170m2
enys Lasdun once said it’s easy to design small buildings. But the brief for MJP Architects’
Maggie’s Centre in
Cheltenham, which opened in September, though deliberately non-prescriptive and requiring no clinical facilities, is implicitly complex. MJP founder Richard MacCormac – a friend of the centre’s namesake, Maggie Keswick Jencks – was touched by the disease when his partner, interiors expert Jocasta Innes, survived throat cancer. Maggie’s Cheltenham,
commissioned in 2003, is tightly focussed on its brief. ‘I’m not a calm person, but I’m very good at architectural calm’, says MacCormac. But he also uses the vehicle of a small building with a generous budget to explore certain preoccupations that are relevant to the brief, such as the idea of a building within a building,
the architectural possibilities of thick walls, the notion of the building as a ship and, above all, an attention to detailed craftsmanship that he describes as ‘self-imposed complexity’. MacCormac also brings certain influences to the table. Having set up his practice when he qualified in 1969, he had no principal mentor. Instead, he has multiple influences, including his teachers at the Cambridge School of Architecture, Leslie Martin, Lionel March and Colin Rowe. He belongs to a generation that stood in the shadow of the 20th century’s great architects; Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto and Louis Kahn. Along with John Soane, they are constant references in his work. MacCormac is a continuity man, who connects us with these influences. In an age of over-specialisation in
architecture, driven by the complexity of construction, building >>
Above Dining
room with inglenook and yoga room beyond. European oak was specified throughout Above right
Sketch by Richard MacCormac
aj 02.12.10
Site plan 2
1. Original lodge 2. New building 3. Garden 4. Car park 5. Disabled parking space
0 5m N 4 21 1 3
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