Joyful Spaces: Maggie’s Centre, Royal Oldham Hospital – Jon Humphreys

Outside our homes, the commercial spaces we inhabit daily should do more than just function – they should enrich our lives and spark joy.  Our new Joyful Spaces series will form a collection of inspiring spaces, chosen by designers and professionals who share their personal connections to the places that brighten their days.

Each article in this series highlights a personally significant commercial space, exploring its history, design, and emotional resonance through the eyes of the contributor. By uncovering the stories behind these spaces, we hope to celebrate the environments that uplift and inspire us.

This new series continues with a Joyful Space chosen by Jon Humphreys, Creative Director & Co-owner, Sheila Bird Studio. In his own words Jon reflects on Maggie’s Centre at the Royal Oldham Hospital, a place which despite it’s reason for being can bring joy. 

Maggie’s Centre in Oldham by Studio dRMM

‘Joy is at the heart of human wellbeing, which makes it all the harder to understand why spaces meant to heal people so often have the opposite effect. Hospital architecture often conveys the same cold institutional feeling as prisons. You arrive already frightened, and the building does its best to make you feel worse – the strip lighting, the lack of colour, the corridors that feel like they might never end. Maggie’s Centres do things differently.

Founded by landscape designer Maggie Keswick Jencks after her cancer diagnosis in 1993, the charity was built on a belief that the right room, with the right light and the right view, could do something no drug could – make you feel like yourself again. There are no signs on doors, no uniforms, no clocks – you can walk in, make yourself a cup of tea, and are made to feel welcome and alive.

I first visited the Maggie’s Centre at the Royal Oldham Hospital on a tour researching new Manchester architecture, and it stopped me in my tracks, its sensual simplicity and uplifting calm hit me more powerfully than anything else I’d encountered.

Designed by London studio dRMM, it is a wooden box on slender columns floating above a scented garden of pine, birch and tulip poplar. The space stimulates all the senses down to the small details. For example, every door handle is oak rather than metal, because chemotherapy can make cold surfaces painful to touch. The whole building connects with you in that way. A psychologist running classes there has said the building does half her job before she’s even started.

A birch tree grows up through a curved void in the floor and roof. The material palette is warm and deliberate, sunshine yellow resin floors offset against slatted tulipwood ceilings, a walnut kitchen, a great round table where people gather. A curtain by Dutch artist Petra Blaisse loops around one end, creating a room within a room when privacy is needed. Loose furniture is modern without compromising comfort and warmth. A glazed north wall frames a long view out to the Pennines, a horizon, something to look towards.

Joyful isn’t quite the right word for a cancer centre, and yet it fits. It’s the feeling that someone thought carefully about you before you arrived, and made a place accordingly. That’s rarer than it should be. Maggie’s Oldham is a masterclass in proving it doesn’t have to be.’

Photo credit is Alex de Rijke

Jon Humphreys, Creative Director & Co-owner, Sheila Bird Studio

Jon Humphreys is Creative Partner and Co-Owner of Sheila Bird Studio, a Manchester-based interior and place branding practice with over thirty years of experience creating spaces with life, soul and character. With a background spanning architecture, interiors and brand storytelling, Jon’s approach is rooted in the belief that great spaces remove the barriers, both physical and psychological, that stop people feeling welcome, empowered and free to be themselves. Sheila Bird Studio works across workplace, hospitality, education, residential, culture and community, with recent award-winning projects including New Century in Manchester and the TMT Group headquarters in Stockport.