I was recently very privileged to be invited to an evening celebrating the opening of Maggie’s Gartnavel in Glasgow, designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ellen Van Loon from architecture firm OMA. The evening coincided with OMA / Progress at the Barbican, the first major presentation of their work in the UK.
Photograph by Adam Hollier. Courtesy of Maggie’s.
To get things started, we were treated to some live music and Bompas and Parr jellies, some of which were even shaped like the new Maggie’s Centre! And in delicious flavours like elderflower and lemongrass too.
Photograph by Adam Hollier. Courtesy of Maggie’s.
We then heard from Maggie’s Trustee and Co-Founder, Charles Jencks, Maggie’s CEO Laura Lee, and OMA’s Ellen Van Loon. I always love to know more about how the design of buildings came about, so this part was really interesting for me. Rem Koolhaas was a personal friend of Maggie Keswick Jencks and so was particularly keen to get the design of Maggie’s Gartnavel right – it took him some time to feel ready to take it on. He is a big believer that corridors should circle in and out of buildings with views in and out, connecting the whole building. In this case, Charles joked, the corridor has swallowed the whole building! He described it as “a corridor that wraps”. It’s a very masculine building with a lot of ‘yang’. Maggie and Charles’ daughter, Lily Jencks provided the ‘yin’ with her garden design.
Photograph by Adam Hollier. Courtesy of Maggie’s.
Ellen Van Loon described the project as the nicest client relationship they had ever had, saying they “had an idea, drew it, built it” and everyone was happy. She also said that it was really nice to work on a small project, enabling them to think about the whole project at one time.
Maggie’s Centre footprint on Barbican Sculpture Court, OMA/Progress. Photograph by: Lyndon Douglas. Courtesy Barbican Art Gallery.
After the formal part of the event, there was an opportunity to explore the Barbican event; OMA / Progress. The curation was really interesting, in that it avoided typical scale models of the firm’s work and sought to represent the firm in a more direct way. As well as a 1:1 footprint on Maggie’s Gartnavel on the roof, examples included a screen flashing up every image on their hard drive. Apparently it would take 48 hours to see them all – I didn’t stick around to see if that was right!
Internal emails had been printed out and stuck to walls to give you a sense of what it must be like to work there. No photography was allowed, but there were pictures you could tear off the wall, with the amount remaining giving a sense of which were the most popular. One room has been given over to the firm by the curators to what they liked with. It was a really interesting approach to an exhibition about architecture, which is often so hard to capture on a small scale.
OMA/Progress. Photograph by: Lyndon Douglas. Courtesy Barbican Art Gallery.
For the real architecture geeks amongst you, there is currently a silent auction for a beautiful 1:200 model of Maggie’s Gartnavel, signed by Rem Koolhaas himself. The 3D model is made from printed polymer and sits on an oak base. It has an acrylic display case and a rather fetching custom-made transport case. Place your bids here.
Are you going to place a bid? Have you seen the exhibition, or indeed visited Maggie’s Gartnavel? What did you think?
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- http://www.dezeen.com/2011/10/05/maggies-gartnavel-by-oma/
- http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/16890/oma-maggies-gartnavel.html
- http://londonist.com/2011/10/review-oma-progress-barbican-centre.php
- http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/fefe8b16-f583-11e0-94b1-00144feab49a.html
