Canadian Cancer Society: Prevention+Support Centre
Ema Peter

Reimaging the Canadian Cancer Society in Vancouver

SHAPE Architecture Inc. como Arquitetos

This project combines an extensive reimagining of the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) lodge and head office with an expansion to create a new entrance, amenity areas and a main gathering space. The renovation required integrating three interconnected building systems, each with its own code standards and varying architectural quality due to being built at different times. While it would have been easier to add a fourth building system, this would have created complexities for future renovations. Instead, the team decided to unify all the buildings and operate them as one. This meant gutting the three existing systems and replacing them with a single unified system. Where possible, building components were salvaged and reused in the new system. This approach enabled cost-savings but was also quite challenging.

Ema Peter

The new building consolidates entry points and provides new gathering, fitness and related program spaces for the Canadian Cancer Society staff and lodge guests. The expansion is wrapped in an aluminum tube screen that is conceived as a protective veil—it both shelters and reveals the building's interior, creating a new public face for this important non-profit group. The new building is built to BC Step Code Level 4 and includes a wandering top-lit oak stair that connects CCS staff from different departments, providing spaces for casual encounters and interactions.

photo_credit Ema Peter
Ema Peter

The project's key sustainability goals were to repurpose existing construction and use new construction to connect the complex both functionally and environmentally. With its unique non-institutional character, the building marks the eastern entrance to Vancouver's health care district. The complex includes a lodge and a subsidized hotel for cancer patients receiving treatment in Vancouver. The client's mandate was to create a public face for CCS's West Coast Head Office, and a place where patients, staff and the general public could meet both formally and informally to provide support and access to innovative research.

photo_credit Ema Peter
Ema Peter

Critical to the project was an opportunity for CCS to reconsider how it presented itself to the City. From the start, the goal was to develop a project that did not feel institutional, one in which the day-to-day life of the building revealed itself to the street. This approach also served an essential function of community outreach for CCS. The central atrium space acts as both a semi-public space for the dissemination of cancer research to the public at large and a venue for larger fundraising events.

photo_credit Ema Peter
Ema Peter
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