Gender, Class and a Cup of Tea: A Critical Discussion of How Maggie's Cancer Care Centre Engage with Culturally Constructed Expectations and Ideologies Pertaining to Gender and Class Part 1 Dissertation 2012 Gregory Murrell Newcastle University | UK Maggie Keswick Jencks Cancer Caring Centres (Maggie's) are praised for providing thequintessential antithesis to the frighteningly institutional atmosphere of a large hospital.No doubt, their high profile is also due to the extraordinary list of architects who havedesigned them, which reads like a who's who of an architectural coterie. Contrary to thisprevailing attitude within the architectural profession, this dissertation examines how thewell-designed spaces of these Centres also serve as spatial sorters, excluding certainsegments of society based on gender and class. It argues that healing spaces do not takea universal form, but in fact are quite specific to certain culturally constructedexpectations of society.The Centres adopt a wilful domesticity in their design and the kitchen may be identifiedat the centre of virtually all Maggie's. Bespoke designer furniture and commissionedartworks fill the remaining spaces where visual connections to natural elements outsideare also important. They are a built environment choreographed to relieve distress,inspire confidence and allow the patient to feel valued. Thus Maggie's deliberately bringsthe care giving process into the more familiar surroundings of home; the widely acceptedinference being that this particular mode of physical space is more conducive to thephysiological process of dealing with and hopefully overcoming cancer than that of theimpersonal general hospital.In this dissertation, by compiling an in-depth analysis of their design, self-publicity,representation in popular media and architectural discourse, I examine whether there is arelationship between the physical, visual and verbal presence of Maggie's on the onehand and the disparity in the number of male vs. female patients (ratio 1:3) visitingdespite the comparable incidence of cancer in both sexes and their perceived middleclassnesson the other. I argue that this line of enquiry presents some unexpecteddiscoveries and provokes further questions for Maggie's and, more broadly, the field ofNeurobiology into what may be regarded as a physical space conducive to healing. Tutor(s) Zeynep Kezer