C shaped iron cores, surrounding a rotating magnet can certainly work. usually what you do is wind each one separately and connect then in a concentrated pole design, such that there are a few less magnets than there are cores. for example, 12 cores and 10 magnets.
this is basically the same topology.
there was a company i can't find it, where they patented a method to use ferrite magnets and get useable torque out of the motor. what they did was use a trapezoidal shaped lamination stack (very easy to make), and wound 12 of them (or whatever number)
but instead of the ends being flat, and using a flat disk of neodymium magnets to get a useable 1T flux density in the laminations, what they did was cut the ends of the magnetic cores at a taper. so the magnets now could have twice or more of surface area as the cross sectional area of the lamination stack on which the windings are made.. and without the magnetic field flowing sideways through the core. (so from the center of the motor outward, each strip of steel gets wider, and longer)
the ferrite magnets were thus radial 3d wedges, sort of like that of a countersink drill bit.
