Maggie Centre at Nine Wells, Dundee

A House for the end of life
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00wr7rp

Maggie's Centres was founded by and named after the late Maggie Keswick Jencks, who died of cancer in 1995. Like her husband, architectural writer and critic Charles Jencks, she believed in the ability of buildings to uplift people. The buildings that house the centres have been designed by leading architects, including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Richard Rogers.^[1]They are not intended as a replacement for conventional cancer therapy, but as a caring environment that can provide support, information and practical advice. They are located near, but are detached from, existing NHS hospitals.

In May 2019, we were near one and dropped in for a visit.

A lady at the centre very kindly asked if we needed any help. We explained that we were just visiting - 'you must be an architect, I know because you have a posh sketch book'. She smiled at her own joke and left us. There was a meeting at the kitchen, half a dozen people gathered around a dining table with steaming cups of something; tea perhaps and biscuits.
We went upstairs and sat in the Quiet room, in the belly of the tower with a solitary window and a skylight. It was very peaceful.

The Quiet room

Sculpture by Andrew Gromley

This was Frank Gehry's first building in UK, and won the 'Building of the Year' in 2003.

Belakang Kong Heng

An old diary and a ball point pen

Someone remarked that this looks like a colouring book, she was referring to the Paint company logo on the page. I told her that this was a habit left over from the tutoring days, when I reminded students that it is not necessary to invest in expensive drawing equipment and material to develop a skill. Sometimes, all it takes is an old diary and hotel room pens.

 It takes me about 10 minutes to frame the sketch and capture all the forms, and another 5 minutes to add details and shade.

 This is a re-visit, this time to capture the space more simply with lines only and no colour - to reflect the peace and quiet of the space. Later we visited the Catholic museum next door, and saw paintings by a well-known priest. No one could tell us anymore about the 2 sisters buried in the front garden.

Since I had sketched the churches and the temples, I finished the sketch crawl with this mosque just in time for lunch at Macallum.