The first ever Maggies Centre was a humble extension in the grounds of Edinburgh’s Western General Hospital by ‘local’ architect Richard Murphy. Since then Jencks’ programme has (as most of you will know) accelerated and widened to cover England and architects such as Richard Rogers. Like Mitterrand’s Grand Projets these small buildings can be viewed as a testament to not only the architects and Maggie, but to the man driving it – Charlie Jencks.
Jencks has been accused of collecting architects, of creating an exquisite architectural chocolate box of iconic buildings: starting off with a humble ‘Murphy Caramel’ the confection that really catches the eye is surely the ‘Gehry Whirl’, a swirling confection that shouts ‘look at me’. I took an immediate distaste to this showy product but was told visiting it would change my mind. But having visited twice I found it as indigestible as I’d imagined, a curious mishmash of Bothy, Broch and a bit of Bilbao thrown together. A certain shawl apparently influenced Gehry but to me it’s more of a frozen kilt. Some architects struggle to make the creative leap from small to large but here it seems the opposite has occurred.