Fabricating the Palimpsest, Maggie's Birmingham Part 1 Project 2006 Ian Douglas-Jones Birmingham City University | UK Maggie's Cancer Caring Centre provides a range of services not provided by the NHS, to patients suffering from cancer. The scheme has evolved through a conceptual response to the idea of death and rebirth, and that manifestation in the landscape of the city. I have devised conceptual methodology involving mapping nodes of change and nodes of non-change, superimpositions, shift of scale and applications of metaphor; this culminates in a formal language for the scheme. Combined with pragmatic responses to the site, environmental concerns and programmatic requirements, the building emerges as an intensity of singular interventions. The concept knows no bounds as the interventions have the potential to spread city wide. Ian’s approach to architecture is thoroughly integrated across the discipline and is manifest in the comprehensive resolution of his Birmingham Maggies Centre project. The conceptual foundation and architectural language is informed by his dissertation research and carried through from landscape to furniture. His analogous understanding of the city/body - scarred and decaying whilst changing and growing acknowledges the rough complexity of urban conditions. His treatment of the site/programme as both industrial ‘wave’ and a delicate hand woven tapestry is very thoughtful in circulation and realised in the fine detailing.