“The architecture of hope” a talk by Charles Jencks, co-founder of Maggie’s Cancer Centres
Co-presented by the British Council and the National Council of Social Service in collaboration with the World Architecture Festival
The event was held on Tuesday 3 November 2015 at the Social Service Institute, 111 Somerset Road, #04-01 TripleOne Somerset,Singapore 238164.
Speaker: Charles Jencks
Architectural Theorist, Landscape Architect and Designer
Charles Jencks divides his time between lecturing, writing, and designing in the USA, the UK, and Europe. He is the author of The Architecture of Hope (2015), best-seller The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (re-issued as The New Paradigm in Architecture, 2002). He has also written numerous other books on contemporary arts and building, including What is Post-Modernism? (fourth edition, 1995) and The Architecture of the Jumping Universe (second edition, 1997). His celebrated garden in Scotland is the subject of his book The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (Frances Lincoln, 2003) and in 2004 the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, won the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums for his design, Landform Ueda. Landform projects have also been completed in Europe, and his current concern is working with CERN on an iconographic and green project. He is the author of The Iconic Building, the Power of Enigma, (Frances Lincoln, 2005), Critical Modernism, (Wiley 2007), Can Architecture affect your health? (ArtEZ Press/Sikkens Foundation 2011) and The Architecture of Hope on Maggie’s Centres, revised and rewritten 2nd edition (Published by Frances Lincoln 2015). The Story of Post-Modernism, Five Decades of Ironic, Iconic and Critical Architecture (Wiley, 2011) brings this resurgent tradition up to date while his recent landscape work is summarised in The Universe in the Landscape (Frances Lincoln, 2011). The adhoc sculpture Metaphysical Landscapes was exhibited at Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh in 2011. Charles most recent landart project The Crawick Multiverse, was commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch, and opened in Scotland in June 2015.
The Maggie Centres:
Maggie’s provides free practical, emotional and social support to people with cancer and their family and friends, following the ideas about cancer care originally laid out by Maggie Keswick Jencks.
Designed by some of the world’s leading architects (including Richard Rogers, Zaha Hadid, Wilkinson Eyre, Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas, with designs in progress by Norman Foster and Thomas Heatherwick), they are innovative in their design and in their approach to care, support and activities.
Built on the grounds of NHS cancer hospitals, Maggie’s Centres are places with professional staff on hand to offer the support people need.
The Centres are places to find practical advice about benefits and eating well; places where qualified experts provide emotional support; places to meet other people; places where you can simply sit quietly with a cup of tea.
The first Maggie’s Centre opened in Edinburgh in 1996 and since then Maggie’s has continued to grow, with 20 Centres at major NHS cancer hospitals in the UK, online and abroad.