talking about respect and designing a better outlook
Maggie's Gartnavel and Rem Koolhaas (OMA)
Rem Hoolhaas starts his
lecture about OMA's design approach to Maggie's Cancer caring Center in Glasgow as a humorous, yet realistic assessment of traditional architectural practices. He jokes about architectural interventions needing to exist "without destroying the qualities of that site that attracted you in the first place" while flipping through pictures of the wooded area the center now occupies. He was very excited about the topography of the site with its "romantic and delicate sections" and sought to design a center within it that changed the "sights, smells and colors" people generally associate fearfully with hospital settings.
The center is a ring of connected spaces that gently flow into one another, allowing for privacy where needed and views into the center garden. OMA kept the vegetation and slope of the site as much as possible in order to not destroy what had attracted them in the first place and used these feature to influence the design. In the lecture, he moves on to talk about how the evolution of the design process drew from the shapes of the surrounding architecture, the topography and the conversation the completed center could have with its occupants.
While an incredibly successful design, I am actually quite moved with the verbal presentation skills Rem Koolhaas exhibits in his lecture. He guides you through his work carefully, setting the stage for each unveiling of strategy and implementation. He makes you love and respect the site. His jokes about the previous architecture of the area being a "full expression of doubt" make you feel really invested in his solution: he nestles the new design carefully into the somewhat troubled setting. He certainly has a flair for speaking, for convincing and for shaping the argument of design.
