This book is primarily about the architecture of Maggie's Centres, not about cancer, but it does not make sense to separate the two completely and, as I hope to show, the metaphors that underlie them both have to be thought about deeply for they steer us in certain directions. We have created these buildings with patients in mind yet have also learned a lot from them as this strange building type developed. It is an unusual one today, radically mixed in functions and moods, a cross between several existing types