The Maggie's charity was founded by the late Maggie Keswick Jencks and her husband, architecture theorist Charles Jencks. Built in the grounds of NHS cancer hospitals, Maggie’s Centres are places with professional staff on hand to provide 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.

Maggie’s developed the proposal for a cancer center at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, at the invitation of the Barts Health NHS Trust, to enhance the quality of care for cancer patients across North East London. The Centre, designed by Steven Holl Architects, continues the charity’s tradition of visionary and inspirational design that supports world-class cancer care.

A three story “urban townhouse,” the new Centre has been designed to be full of open space and light. The exterior works in harmony with the interior, allowing natural light to wash over the floors and walls, ever changing through the natural daylight pattern of the seasons. A roof garden will grow flowering trees.