The Centres are committed first to helping cancer sufferers help themselves, to inspiring carers to care more, and secondly to architecture. It is the arts and building, important allies in the perennial struggle with cancer, that lead to the 'architecture of hope'. As people walk into a centre after a diagnosis, or enervating treatment, often disoriented and lacking in self-confidence, they enter another world which acknowledges their importance and a basic condition that may become prevalent: living with cancer and not losing hope.