Nighthorse Campbell Native Health Building

The design is deeply rooted in Native American cultural traditions. The building’s curved form tilts toward the campus’s main drive, with the entry aligned to the winter solstice, honoring solar orientation practices. Circular volumes enclose a central 53-foot rotunda, an auditorium, and an outdoor “council ring,” each divided into seven sections symbolizing love, honor, courage, respect, honesty, reciprocity, and family. These divisions are further subdivided to reflect the 28 segments of the medicine wheel. Exterior materials, architectural forms, and skylights draw from multiple Native nations: eight corner windows reference Plains, Pueblo, and Alaskan traditions, while the rotunda’s seven poles echo the structure of a teepee and the Blackfoot nation aesthetic. The outdoor council ring contains soil from four cardinal points across the U.S.—Nome, Alaska; the Miccosukee Reservation, Florida; Passamaquoddy, Maine; and Feather Ring, California—further connecting the building to the people it serves.