“The building has feelings which I hope engender community activity, and that it’s comfortable for the patients to be there. It’s respectful of Chinese architecture and motifs.” —Frank Gehry
Perched on the edge of a lawn near the Tuen Mun Hospital oncology unit, the site is a subtle reference to traditional Suzhou Chinese gardens. The building itself acts as a bridge over a pond surrounded by four gardens. Each garden serves a different purpose—one is for private counseling and another is for meditation. Maggie Keswick Jencks’ (the inspiration behind her eponymous center) daughter, Lily Jencks, worked with Gehry as part of the design team, to create the landscape surrounding the center. Based on Maggie Keswick’s book, The Chinese Garden, “We have taken the experience of calm, the reciprocity between nature and man, and the intimate spaces of quiet contemplation found in this traditional design, to create something quite new, that will help with the extraordinary work of the Maggie's,” Jencks said.
Maggie’s Hong Kong is the second Maggie’s Center designed by Frank Gehry. For more information on universal design, watch our interview with Michael Graves on the topic.
