Maggie's Glasgow Gartnavel Opening

Maggie’s celebrate landmark year by unveiling the first of three new centres planned for the UK.

On 3 October 2011 Maggie’s open their eighth centre in the UK. Maggie’s Glasgow Gartnavel is one of three new Maggie’s Centres set to open before the end of the year, as part of a dramatic expansion to improve the landscape of cancer care and support across the UK – Maggie’s Glasgow Gartnavel, Maggie’s Nottingham and Maggie’s South West Wales.

The building is funded by the Walk the Walk’s Edinburgh Moonwalkers who have raised the £2.7million needed to bring a second Maggie’s Centre to Glasgow to serve the west of Scotland’s cancer population – an area with a high incidence of cancer. The centre acknowledges the support from the tens of thousands of Edinburgh Moonwalkers, who have taken part in the 26mile walk over the past four years, through an engraving on the front door.

Nina Barough CBE, Walk the Walk Worldwide Founder at the opening of Maggie's Gartnavel

The centre is designed by OMA Partners Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon. OMA is one of the most influential architectural practices working today, and Maggie’s Glasgow Gartnavel will be their first permanent building to open in the UK. Maggie’s Glasgow Gartnavel is a single-level building in the form of a ring of interlocking rooms surrounding an internal landscaped courtyard, which overlooks the hospital site and city from its position atop a hill on the Gartnavel Hospital site. 

The centre is located a stone’s throw from the Scotland’s leading oncology facility, the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre, which serves a population of 2.8 million people (60 per cent of Scotland’s population).

Maggie’s Glasgow Gartnavel will work in tandem with the original Maggie’s Glasgow Gatehouse at the Western Infirmary (opened in 2002), to provide a first class level of evidence based emotional support and practical advice to people with cancer, their friends and family. People at any stage of their cancer journey will be able to access the professional and peer led support available at Maggie’s, to help them to build a life with, through and beyond cancer.

Complementing the centre’s design is a landscape design consisting of internal courtyard plantings and a surrounding wooded glades area, designed by Lily Jencks, daughter of Maggie's Founders, Maggie Keswick Jencks and Charles Jencks, in conjunction with the landscape architecture and urban design company Harrison Stevens.

“It is an honour to open our eighth Maggie’s Centre. Today is a celebration of a fantastic new resource for the west of Scotland’s cancer population, as well as a celebration of this pivotal year in Maggie’s history”
Maggie’s Chief Executive Laura Lee

“What a proud day for us today! Our Edinburgh Moonwalk event has fully funded this fabulous new Maggie’s Centre, which will offer the skills and support needed to face a cancer diagnosis."
Nina Barough CBE Walk the Walk Worldwide Founder

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