‘We’re probably always going to suffer from small firm syndrome,’ Katherine Darnstadt says. The founder of Latent Design – which has been working in multiple disciplines but always with a focus on spatial and racial equity, restorative design, and reclaiming access to space for a wide population – is talking about the biggest challenge facing her six-person Chicago-based firm, which she formally started in 2009. ‘But it’s something we’ve learned to embrace – it’s a quality, it’s not a deficit.’
Being a small firm has allowed Darnstadt and her team the nimbleness to take on a wide variety of projects and to use planning, zoning, codes, and financing as creatively as most of her peers are using AutoCAD and renderings. For her, architecture and urban planning have not only the possibility, but the necessity, to make a profound impact, as seen in work for clients such as the Mayo Clinic, the Boys & Girls Clubs, and 40 Acres Fresh Market, and projects including community masterplans, affordable housing, and commercial interiors. For Mayo, Latent Design brought a sense of place and permanence to the clinic’s home in the small town of Rochester, Minnesota.
Katherine Darnstadt of Latent Design, at The Robey in Chicago
Darnstadt points out that there are only about 200,000 permanent residents in the town but about three million medical visitors a year. It’s a tension that to anyone else might have seemed impossible to bridge, but to her allowed for a creative opening up of the downtown area, linking the drive to be healthy to reconsidered and reconfigured outdoor spaces.
For her 2018 project Boombox, she transformed shipping containers into affordable micro-retail spaces, bringing small businesses into Chicago neighbourhoods that, she says, are ‘normally locked out of commercial real estate’. She's now working with one of those businesses, 40 Acres Fresh Market, on a full-scale standalone grocery store on the West Side of Chicago. ‘It’s not a food desert,’ Darnstadt says of that neighbourhood. ‘It’s food apartheid.’
Interior of the Boombox space
Such directness and clarity are part of what has made Latent Design a go-to for clients deeply invested in actually changing how a variety of populations experience the built environment. As a certified Benefit Corporation since 2013, Latent Design is invested in financial and social equity, and in truly wielding all kinds of architectural and planning skills to make measurable differences in its home city of Chicago and beyond.
The team’s work is ‘really based in looking at those kinds of placemaking provocations that reveal a gap, or reveal the inequity, and then turn that into something more permanent’, says Darnstadt. ‘That’s either a policy piece, a piece of architecture, or a business model.’ They may be a small firm, but they’re mighty.
The Boys & Girls Clubs
Forty Acres project
INFORMATION
-
Complex and stimulating, Federico Stefanovich's industrial designs act like a bridge between culture and economicsIn a rapidly changing world, the route designers take to discover their calling is increasingly circuitous. Here Federico Stefanovich tells us about his increasing desire to find his own path
-
Design practice Astraeus Clarke is inspired by cinema to tell a story and evoke an emotionIn a rapidly changing world, the route designers take to discover their calling is increasingly circuitous. Here we speak to Chelsie and Jacob Starley the creative duo behind Astraeus Clarke
-
Amelia Stevens' playful, minimalist design 'is geared towards beauty as a function of longevity'In a rapidly changing world, the route designers take to discover their calling is increasingly circuitous. Here we speak to Amelia Stevens about the multi-disciplinary joy of design
-
Entelechy II: architect John Portman's majestic beach home hits the marketEntelechy II, architect John Portman's beach residence in Georgia, USA, goes on the market; roll up, roll up for a home that is as grand as it is playful
-
First look: Honolulu's Victoria Place blends cosmopolitan living with Hawaii life and natureVictoria Place is a new residential tower at Honolulu's Ward Village; take a first look at its interiors
-
A look inside the home of George Homsey, one of the fathers of pioneering California modernist community Sea RanchGeorge Homsey's home opens for the first time since his death, in 2019; see where the architect behind some of the designs for Sea Ranch, the pioneering California modernist community, lived
-
Step inside a Brooklyn Brownstone that bridges old and new'Brooklyn Brownstone' has been refreshed by Jon Powell Architects (JPA) and the result is a contemporary design rooted in modern elegance
-
The new Frederic Church Center at Olana complements its leafy Upstate New York siteTour the Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape, now open at Olana, a historic site in Upstate New York, courtesy of architecture studio ARO
-
On a sloped Los Angeles site, a cascade of green 'boxes' offers inside outside livingUnStack, a house by FreelandBuck, is a cascading series of bright green volumes, with mountain views
-
This New York brownstone was transformed through the power of a single, clever moveVoid House, a New York brownstone reimagined by architecture studio Light and Air, is an interior transformed through the power of one smart move
-
A new Texas house transforms a sloping plot into a multi-layered family homeThe Griggs Residence is a Texas house that shields its interior world and spacious terraces with a stone and steel façade
