FORCE Cancer Support Centre, Exeter

FORCE (Friends of the Oncology & Radiotherapy Centre) offer information and support to cancer patients and their families.  The Centre provides meeting and seminar rooms, consultation and therapy rooms, lounge/quiet areas, resources library and admin areas.

The site, a corner of the RD&E hospital campus, is surrounded by large clinical and administrative hospital buildings, while the purpose of this Centre is to provide a point of tranquility and respite.  So the design essentially creates an oasis courtyard as the heart of the scheme, the building itself providing the protective wall enclosing this and in an unusual organic form strongly contrasting to the surrounding system-built formality.  The entrance, independent and direct from the street, reinforces this.

Planning permission has recently been granted for an extension which will provide further seminar and admin space and occupational therapy.