The mission of Stella’s Circle is to transform lives through Real Homes, Real Work and Real Help. Stella’s Circle assists adults who have faced challenges that prevent them from fully participating in their community. These challenges may include mental health and addictions issues, homelessness, poverty, long periods of unemployment and criminal justice involvement. Stella’s Circle offers supportive housing; residential; community and institutional-based counselling; and education, employment and work experience.

FMA designed two buildings with Stella’s Circle at Rawlin’s Cross in St. John’s, NL. Both of these buildings offer supportive housing in addition to administrative offices, a resource centre and a social enterprise (restaurant). This required FMA to understand the organization’s programmatic needs, and understand the people they want to reach. Usually by having meetings with representation from their entire community, we work to involve them in the design process to fine tune every detail.

This adaptive re-use project is on a tight urban site with strict spatial and zoning requirements. While knitting into the existing urban fabric, the building is renovated to meet building envelop performance and program requirements. Both buildings have received a Southcott Historic Trust Award and the project has received the Universal City Award from the Canadian Urban Institute.