CO-OP Architecture

CO-OP Architecture is an architect in Aberdeen, SD. Founded on the first of June in 2012, the firm grew from a handful of people working between Aberdeen and Sioux Falls into a group of about thirty Midwesterners across four offices, with Rapid City added in 2016 and Sioux Center in 2024. The practice is a design and planning firm whose work covers schools, offices, downtown mixed-use buildings, restorations, civic and public projects, interior design, and master planning, and notably excludes single-family homes and developer-style multifamily work.

The firm's name is a tribute to the cooperation that underpins life in the heartland, and the team is focused on shaping South Dakota architecture by celebrating the region's pragmatic roots while challenging the status quo. Among their more unusual undertakings was a one-third scale pirate ship, a project outside their usual scope. The Aberdeen office shares its address on South Main Street with a working phone line that connects clients to a firm known for its regional breadth and its stated ambition to see its communities thrive.

The Aberdeen studio sits on South Main Street about a third of a mile from the Beulah Williams Library, with 6th Avenue Southwest roughly four-tenths of a mile away. Within half a mile, the Capitol Theater and Jewett Theater, the Johnson Fine Arts Center, and the Veterans Memorial all lie close by, anchoring the office within Aberdeen's civic and cultural core.

CO-OP Architecture approaches its work through the lens of place, weaving the character of the heartland into each project and grounding its practice in the communities of South Dakota and neighboring Iowa.