The indoors are "in permanent dialogue with the garden" at the latest Maggie's Centre for cancer care, completed by Amanda Levete's studio AL_A.
Maggie's Southampton is a low-lying pavilion hidden within Southampton General Hospital's car park by a verdant garden that covers three-quarters of the centre's plot.
It was designed by AL_A with Sarah Price Landscapes to bring greenery and "a piece of the nearby New Forest" to the otherwise grey site, according to the studio's director Maximiliano Arrocet.
Above: AL_A has completed Maggie's Southampton. Top image: it is a low-lying pavilion surrounded by gardens.
"The site for Maggie's Southampton was a challenging one, a set of nondescript buildings surrounded by a sea of car park," Arrocet told Dezeen. "We wanted the Maggie's to be easily identifiable in this expanse of grey, and bring to the hospital what it needed most, a garden," he said.
Large ceramic walls are used to separate the spaces
Maggie's Southampton was built to support the hospital's specialist oncology unit. It is one-storey in height and has a pinwheel-shaped plan comprising four spaces that stem from a central point.
As with all Maggie's Centres, at the heart of the building is the communal kitchen and dining table. It is lit by a circular skylight, which is the only curved element in the entire building.
Ceramics were chosen for an earthy aesthetic
The four zones are defined by four "blade walls", which exten...