Duke Cancer Care Center
Project Stats
- Location
Durham, North Carolina
- Size
266,000 SF
- Role
Design Architect
- Market
- Expertise
A new approach
The award-winning Duke Cancer Care Center represents a new approach to outpatient cancer care. The center has been acclaimed for delivering environments that proactively promote recovery, provide family space, and facilitate knowledge-sharing. Placed within the master-planned Duke Medical Center campus in Durham, North Carolina, the center connects to the inpatient Duke Medicine Pavilion through a new, two-story concourse at its southern flank and feeds into the north end of the outpatient Duke Clinic.
The exterior character of the building combines finely detailed stone, varied fenestration, plentiful glazing, and metal paneling to complement the existing collegiate gothic architecture while conveying the cutting-edge treatment provided inside. Interior spaces have visual access to the gardens and ample daylight provided by a central atrium. Flexible furnishings and biophilic, healthy finishes, all designed in collaboration with the interior architects Tsoi Kobus, provide an environment to promote healing.
An evolving health campus
The design team worked closely with the client’s clinical teams to meet the evolving needs of a growing population of cancer patients and caregivers who require outpatient services. The solutions consolidate clinical cancer services for patient ease, within a flexible floor plan allowing for future expansion possibilities. A multidisciplinary “no ownership” model of shared clinical modules exists throughout all clinical floors.
The 270,000-square-foot Duke Cancer Institute accommodates all of Duke University Health System’s cancer programs with an active network of 125 exam rooms, 75 infusion stations, 25 clinic rooms, three linear accelerators, nine CT scanners and a fourth-floor rooftop terrace. Viewable from hundreds of patient rooms, the living roof garden on the fifth floor features a mix of green-roof plant species, mostly succulents on a pre-vegetated mat, which also reduces the amount of unused stormwater collected from roof leaders.
Strategic uses of color, texture, and materials aid in caregiver and patient wayfinding, helping orient building occupants. Natural daylight penetrates into the nurses’ stations and clinical core thanks to careful corridor alignment and the use of pocket doors for patient treatment rooms, all illuminated by clerestory openings. The team optimized the use of efficient systems, a high-performance envelope, and shading strategies to achieve a more than 20% reduction in energy use for the facility, resulting in a LEED Gold certification.
Evoking comfort and place
The center’s two-story lobby features natural wood walls stretching from floor to ceiling and intricate epoxy terrazzo floor patterns, which echo the Gothic rosette windows found on Duke’s campus. The lobby seating area welcomes patients and their loved ones with a limestone-clad fireplace and slate donor recognition wall, its veneer punctuated by vertical glass panels displaying layered images of North Carolina’s loblolly pines.
Occupants enjoy dramatically sunlit spaces as well as a café, resource room, boutique, and quiet room. In the six-story central atrium, a wooden screen floats in the stairwell, combining motifs of Gothic arches and tree branches. Crafted with precision and seamless joinery, the screen’s overlaying beams convey depth and dimensionality. A landscaped roof garden located near the infusion center and the Medical Circle Healing Garden offer additional areas of respite.
Today, the Duke Cancer Care Center is beloved for its diverse space types that allow for privacy, rejuvenation, and choice. This welcoming, healing environment was recognized for its focus on comfort and convenience for patients, visitors, and staff by the 2014 Boston Society of Architects Healthcare Facilities Design Award.
This project was completed by Cooper Robertson prior to its acquisition by Corgan in November 2025.
