In 2010, Katherine Darnstadt obtained her architecture license, got promoted, got married, got laid off and got pregnant all within a six-month period. With no job prospects in sight, she started the practice Latent Design as a \u201cPlan B.\u201d She pulled $10,000 from her 401k and Roth IRA account to fund the “first few months of working for herself. She worked with Chicago\u2019s Architecture for Humanity chapter to create a design competition with the intent of activating Chicago\u2019s vacant lots that the city-owned. She raised $1,000 that would be offered to the winner of the competition to construct the project on a vacant lot for a one-year period. The winning entry, a series of modular garden boxes, was a tremendous success. The Little Village community around the vacant lot rallied to raise $100,000 and the legal right to install a permanent installation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original competition, Activate!, continued for three more years creating more pop-up projects in communities. This, in turn, generated a commission with the Chicago Department of Transportation to create a
three-year public place-making project along with actual commissions. Latent Design now has dozens of built projects, a real office, and employees. Katherine may not “t your idea of an Architect & Developer, but I think she does. She created a thing that created the work. She did not design that first project, she generated and facilitated the existence of it. She found a pathway to capital that created a tangible piece of the community without having the capital herself. I love her story and her work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2014, Katherine was the opening keynote speaker to the AIA symposium Grow: Practice, Profession, and Career: Cultivating the Next Generation of Architectural Leaders in New York. See more information about Katherine and her work at their website, LatentDesign.net<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katherine starts at 9:00.<\/p>\n\n\n\n