Metal Cladding Ties American Indian Housing Complex to Tribe History
With a name that translates roughly from the Chippewa Ojibwe language as “live the good life,” the Mino-Bimaadiziwin apartment building in Minneapolis is now helping 110 American Indian families, primarily from the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, do just that. The project was developed to address the severe housing shortage among the city’s American Indian citizens and provide added social support. Its façade features metal wall panels in a dramatic palette that also incorporates panels with a unique wood grain finish that ties the building to the tribe’s historic home in a reservation in the woods of Northwest Minnesota.
The apartment building, which also houses the Red Lake Nation Embassy, a child care center and a wellness clinic, is constructed on what was previously the site of an emergency housing shelter at one end of Minneapolis’s Native American Cultural Corridor. In 2018, that shelter was, itself, a response to a significant homelessness problem. The Red Lake Band’s leadership decided a more permanent solution was needed to reduce the challenges of housing insecurity many of their people were facing in the Twin Cities area. That’s when they decided to build one of the first tribal-sponsored housing developments in the United States to both address housing shortfalls and add an anchor point for the city’s burgeoning American Indian community.