PROJECT: Maggie's Centre North East

LOCATION: Newcastle

DATE: 2010 -

Maggie's North East is designed to be a place of calm and care for people with cancer and their friends and families, carers.

To help with these aims, Maggie's North East will have within it a dining/kitchen for meeting and preparing food in; a large shared room for activities such as yoga, classes and lectures; two smaller meeting rooms; two counselling rooms for three people; and a library with a fire in it to sit by in peace.

Particular to this Maggie's Centre is a sheltered sunken court on its south side, which all the main rooms will open out onto. The court will provide a barbeque area, a herb garden and fruit trees. A landscaped roof garden, surrounded by a clipped beech hedge, will be accessed from the library and furnished with a bowling green and fixed exercise equipment.

The building will be low-carbon and low-energy, with grassy banks surrounding it to help with insulation. Pipes below the banks will provide ground source heating to the building and a south facing sloping roof over the library will have photovoltaic cells to make electricity.

A team from Edward Cullinan Architects will be taking part in the Maggies Night Hike in September this year to raise money and support for Maggie's North East. You can sponsor the team walking 20 miles around London at night at our Just Giving webpage.