Serving underprivileged families, Winnipeg’s Centre Village housing cooperative utilizes design to help revitalize a neglected inner-city neighbourhood and to provide its residents with a unique setting that inspires pride and encourages community-building.

The site was an abandoned L-shaped lot zoned for six single-family houses. Instead, the project established a micro village of 25-dwellings within six, three-storey blocks that would be easy to build and maintain. The blocks’ arrangement both defines and animates two public spaces – a through-street and a shared courtyard – that weave the city through the project and provide amenities for residents and the surrounding neighbourhood. The landscaped courtyard offers a calm and protected place for children to play, and the new street is an informal meeting place. Each dwelling has its own entrance, either at grade or up an exterior staircase, thus reducing internal circulation and the size of the overall building, and also prompting residents to connect and get to know one another.

Designed to make the most of space, material and daylight, the units have rich and playful compositions made from compact 8'x12' modules and cantilevered 14’ x 12’ modules for larger living areas that offer broader views. The modules are stacked and interlocked to create diverse unit configurations that vary from 375 square feet for a one-bedroom unit, to 875 square feet for four-bedroom units. Since the rooms of each unit are distributed over several floors, even small apartments have plenty of privacy, which was an important factor since a number of the tenants are multi-generational families.

With entries and windows positioned on all sides of the blocks, there is no rear side to this project, thus improving the street quality and safety and security in all directions. Further, a typical residence has eight or more windows on at least two sides of the building, providing ample and varied access to views, daylight and cross-ventilation. Deeply set, vibrant orange cowlings around the windows modulate privacy and views into the units, granting Centre Village a distinct identity in the city. With time the project is demonstrating how inventive architecture can influence urbanism and positively impact social relationships.