Location: Falcon Heights, Minnesota

Client: Local Community + Family of Philando Castile

Status: Completed in 2022

Area: 5,000 SF

Team: TEN x TEN, 4RM+ULA, Seitu Jones

Slideshow Photos: Morgan Sheff Photography

Philando Castile devoted his life to providing food and kindness to Saint Paul Public School children. On July 6, 2016, he was killed in a police-involved shooting on Larpenteur Avenue in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, just west of the north entrance to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.

The Philando Castile Peace Garden is a contemplative gathering space for peace, justice and healing built to honor and remember Philando Castile. In the wake of his tragic death at the hands of police officers, Philando’s family, community members and local organizations joined forces to establish a vision and raise money to make the peace garden a permanent installation at the site of his shooting.

TEN x TEN worked jointly with an amazing team of collaborators to co-design both a process and a garden. TEN x TEN was invited by 4RM+ULA architects to join the design team for the Concept and Documentation phases in collaboration with artist Seitu Jones. The Peace Garden opened in Winter 2022.

The site, located along the newly named Philando Castile Avenue (formerly Larpenteur Avenue) between Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Falcon Heights, MN. The site of the garden is also the place where Philando was murdered, in the street right of way adjacent to the garden. Since his shooting in 2016, the garden has become sacred ground, protest space and community gathering space. Permanent and temporal art installations, messages and artifacts have been placed throughout the core area of the garden for the last five and a half years and will continue to have a place among the new permanent features.