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The building is designed for day-visitors undergoing cancer care,
either from Ninewells Hospital opposite, or coming in from outside.
It has four principal, interlocking spaces, one on arrival, a second
to the left with a kitchen, a third - an easy sitting area - and
the fourth, a library on two levels. In the tower, the library rises
to take full advantage of the magnificent view of water and hills,
with the stair winding round the periphery of the inner volume.
The use of plentiful natural timber, for the roof structures, internally
exposed, here provides an elegant construction, echoing the communal
areas below. Where Gehry shows himself to be a supreme master of
his art is in retaining the centrifugal force of this building's
volume, the spaces opening out like petals from a central stem. The building straddles a natural promontory. But the point of arrival
is both sheltered and private - no windows overlook the small
car parking area, and so the combination of white-rendered walls
and dynamic, sculpted sheet-metal roof flows beautifully here. From
the entrance drive below, the roof seems to compress its elements,
a series of sharply pointed gables, in stark contrast to the seductive
flow that faces the arriving visitor.
Gehry says he was thinking of a Vermeer painting, a woman portrayed
in a silken shawl, when he conceived the roof. One is perhaps also
reminded of the Italian author Giuseppi di Lampedusa's soothing
image, in The Leopard, of the angel of death who stooped
over Don Fabrizio, her beautiful face revealed momentarily beneath
the shawl as she collected him; it is to such serenities that Gehry's
memorable masterwork corresponds. It seems nothing short of miraculous
that Gehry, from Venice Beach some 6,000 miles westward, concocted
this secret and perfect platform of human aspiration and release.
It goes without saying, Frank, that Maggie Keswick Jencks would
have been thrilled.
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