
Avivo Village is a trauma informed, low barrier housing. It provides short to medium term stays with 24 hour access for 100 people. Aside from shelter Avivo Village provides housing assistance, harm reduction, mental health, and chemical dependency services onsite. All of this is provided within existing underutilized commercial real estate. In 2021 Avivo Village was the recipient of an AIA MN commendation for "Excellence in Design for Well-Being."
This project is an exploration of a new kind of housing that exists in the gap between low income housing and traditional shelter models. It pushed many of the boundaries that confine conventional construction. Code compliance, material supply chain, and financing models control what is possible in construction, and this project had to reinterpret everyone of these rules to find a way forward. Despite these hurdles, clean, safe and supportive housing for 100 people has been built in only 4 months for less than the cost of a high end single family home. All of this was made possible by the close collaboration with Avivo, The White Earth Nation, Greiner Construction, Sustology, and many others.
Although it is not perfect, we hope that this project will serve as a stepping stone towards a wider gradient of housing options for those with the least access, and open up our collective imagination to something outside of our traditional, strict definition of housing.
Avivo Village
client:
Avivo
status:
Complete
2021
size:
48,600 SF
use:
Residential
location:
Minneapolis, MN





























