Project Type: Design- built

Location: Minneapolis

Year: 2025

Landscape/ Garden Design: Divine Ndemeye, Lead Landscape Design

Pavillion: Designed by Chango Cummings with Qadiym Washington with the support of design intern Bella Ngo, and University of Minnesota College of Design student volunteers

Project description: Located at 2112 Emerson in North Minneapolis, the Ahoden Healing Pavilion is an Afrofuturist pocket park, community garden, and healing space. This youth-built design/build project, led by JXTA Enviro Lab in collaboration with Remesha Design Lab, transforms a once-vacant city-owned lot into a public sanctuary for healing, mourning, ceremony, and cultural expression.

At its heart is the Ahoden’s loop, a parametric ceremonial pavilion inspired by the Adinkra symbol Ahoden, meaning “strength” and “energy.” Framed by a river rock garden, the pavilion invites reflection, renewal, and gathering. The stones, sourced from the nearby Mississippi River, carry deep cultural and spiritual resonance for Black communities, where water has long embodied memory, grief, healing, and transformation. Encircling the pavilion with river rock echoes this sacred relationship to water—marking the space as a healing portal: grounded, open, and welcoming to all. The surrounding garden is planted with medicinal, edible, and pollinator species, designed to nourish both community and land while offering a living expression of resilience and care.