SPRE National Accelerator Spotlight:
Arise Architects Co-operative &
The Working Centre

For more than forty years, The Working Centre has created practical, inclusive spaces for people facing unemployment, housing insecurity, and vulnerability across Waterloo Region. What began as a response to growing unemployment in the early 1980s has evolved into a network of community-rooted initiatives that treat housing, food access, work, and dignity as interconnected. Today, The Working Centre owns and operates sixteen buildings that provide approximately one hundred units of housing for 150 residents, alongside essential programs that support job seekers, newcomers, and individuals living rough. Its larger projects demonstrate the breadth and impact of this work: 97 Victoria – Making Home offers a campus model combining forty-four new housing units, St. John’s Kitchen with daily meals and laundry, a barrier-free medical clinic providing primary care and mental health support, and a base for outreach teams supporting encampments and system navigation. The Queen Street Apartments, completed in June 2023, provides deeply affordable housing for immigrant women and children, helping them build independent lives after family separation. Their Queen Street hub of services complements these apartments by offering employment, income, and community supports, ensuring new residents have stability, belonging, and pathways to opportunity.

In operation since 2019, Arise Architects Co-operative, one of Canada’s first worker co-operative architectural firms, specializes in socially responsible design for affordable housing, long-term care, and community spaces. The co-operative structure means members vote on decisions and intentionally select projects aligned with their values, challenging the hierarchy found in many traditional architecture firms. Founder and member Yvonne Ip, along with fellow architect Paniz Moayeri, has helped shape Arise Architects Co-operative into a practice where ethics, community partnership, and design are inseparable.

Together, The Working Centre and Arise Architects Co-operative bring more decades of shared history and community relationships to their current collaboration. Their partnership began through everyday connection rather than formal agreements: Yvonne lp first encountered The Working Centre in 2002 as a gardener at the Queen’s Green Community Garden (Kitchener’s first community garden), which was established in 1998 with The Working Centre’s support. Over time, Yvonne’s connection with The Working Centre grew to include frequenting Recycle Cycles and co-leading the ‘Healthy Mamas’ initiative, which used The Working Centre facilities to provide affordable natural and organic food to the community. Years later, a neighbour and Working Centre staff member invited Yvonne to provide feedback on a Working Centre project. By this time, Yvonne had begun forming what would become Arise Architects Co-operative. With the Working Centre’s previous architect retiring, the alignment in values made partnering a natural next step. The project emerging through the SPRE National Accelerator is now their second major collaboration.

The development concept taking shape through the Accelerator reflects both organizations’ bottom-up approach. After learning about the Accelerator, Arise Architects Co-operative approached The Working Centre to explore co-developing a new affordable housing complex in Kitchener. Although the project is still in early stages, the partners are exploring socially and financially sustainable models for two long-held properties near the downtown core. Their shared goal is to create a mixed-use development that integrates supportive and affordable housing with meaningful community spaces where people can live, gather, and feel connected.
At the first site, currently home to one family and a community greenhouse, the vision is to intensify the land through phased development that adds new homes while preserving the greenhouse as a community hub that could support food security. At the second site, where five single individuals and a house coordinator live, the team is considering adding a four- to six-unit building while retaining the existing house. Arise and the Working Centre are exploring what is possible within financing and zoning constraints, and will select one of the sites based on various factors. The emerging project responds to a growing need for integrated, stable, and community-connected housing in Waterloo Region.

Looking ahead, Arise Architects Co-operative and The Working Centre aim to develop a long-term plan that balances mission, affordability, and sustainable development. This includes exploring public and private partnerships and funding tools that can support community-based housing. Their collaboration through the SPRE National Accelerator reflects what becomes possible when local organizations with shared values build together over time: housing, community space, and social supports connected in one place, designed by and for the communities they serve.