Photo: alanblakely.com
Varied panel profiles and orientations create a play of light and shadow across the façade of Mino- Bimaadiziwin apartment building. Colors and textures break up the boxy structure of the building, which has a V-shaped footprint.
The Red Lake Band required a permanent solution to reduce housing insecurity in the Twin Cities area. The Mino-Bimaadiziwin apartment building was built to address housing insecurity and add an anchor point for the city’s growing American Indian community. It 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 built to serve unhoused people.
Cuningham Group designed the six-story residential complex with a group of three metal wall panels on upper floors and masonry cladding at the first floor. Alternating sections of vertical, flush, Matte Black panels, and horizontal, corrugated, Bone White panels are accented by vertical, flush, Super Douglas woodgrain panels cladding stairwells and framing Matte Black-clad sections. The Super Douglas woodgrain finish ties the design to the tribe’s historic home on a reservation in the woods of Northwest Minnesota.
Jeremiah Johnson, senior associate at Cuningham group, says, “For the wood-look elements, we chose a finish called Super Douglas because it most closely resembled wood milled from the white cedar trees that are native to Red Lake Nation lands.”
Progressive Building Systems Ltd. installed Petersen Aluminum Corp.’s PACCLAD Flush panels in Matte Black and custom Super Douglas woodgrain finish. Progressive Building Systems also installed Petersen’s exposed fastener 7.2 box-rib panels in Bone White.
David Lage, project manager and estimator at Progressive Building Systems, says, “Petersen was able to offer a coil-coated product so we could order flat sheet materials ahead of time and fabricate our flashings as needed.”
The Mino-Bimaadiziwin apartment building houses the Red Lake Nation Embassy, a childcare center and wellness clinic. Mino- Bimaadiziwin’s name roughly translates from the Chippewa Ojibwe language to live the good life.
