Buildings designed to care: 30 years of Maggie's cancer centres

Can a building really make you feel better? Kirsty Speers thinks it can. "I think for me it has been so important and instrumental in my journey with cancer, and I have no shadow of a doubt that the building and the space has played a massive role in that - so absolutely," she says. In 2024, she was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer - Pseudomyxoma - which generally starts in the appendix. She is convinced that going to the Maggie's Centre in Dundee helped. "It's a space that allows you to have conversations and have that support that you didn't really know you even needed either," she adds. "I think the building just adds to that immensely." Kirsty's story is part of an exhibition at the V&A Dundee looking into the links between architecture and health to mark 30 years of Maggie's Centres. The blueprint for the centres was designed by Maggie Keswick Jencks while she was living with advanced cancer. She was a writer, gardener and designer who dreamt of buildings that would help people "not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying". She died before the first one opened in Edinburgh in 1996 but key to her plans was the combination of outstanding architecture and expert c