EP 21: Designing Equitable Places | Katherine Darnstadt
Katherine Darnstadt is the founder of Latent Design, a boutique architecture and urban design firm leveraging civic innovation and social impact to design more equitable spaces and systems. Since founding her practice in 2010, Katherine and her firm have prototyped new design systems to advance urban agriculture, support small business, create spaces for youth makers, advance building innovation and create public space frameworks. Concurrently, she is the founder of Boombox, Chicago's first micro retail popup in a shipping container. To date the program has supported over 150 small businesses and built new models of finance and policy to support micro retail in Chicago. In addition, she recently co-founded a community design nonprofit, Design Trust Chicago to address ongoing spatial and social injustices in the built environment. Bon and Katherine talk about the role of architecture in improving public health, repurposed buses acting as mobile produce markets and redefining public spaces.