In the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver, students and faculty engage directly with our vibrant city, dynamic community, and magnificent landscape by working on real projects that make a real difference.
Native American culture will always run deep in this community’s blood and soul, but Pine Ridge Reservation is missing physical spaces for its rich culture to be celebrated. This building’s goal is to bring back their ways of making, creating, and displaying their work. It gives them an open, easily accessed for young and old, designated place to do so.
This design features an open-spaced workshop populated with desks for one-on-one craft work such as sewing and beading between elders and the youth, as well as a small-scale woodshop used to produce smaller wood carvings and instruments. An exterior courtyard allows a gathering space for historic storytelling within the tribe.