Karla Rothstein

Rothstein co-founded LATENT Productions with Salvatore Perry to harness the specific potential embedded within each design project, celebrating innovative spatial and material qualities. Rigorously conceived and executed, LATENT’s projects are an alchemical celebration of concept, context, and opportunity. A house on Ballston Lake, comprised of 150,000 pounds of precast concrete, Rothstein’s first built work, has been featured in multiple international publications. It is the only house in the US included in the book In DETAIL: Single Family Houses (Birkhäuser, 2000) and is included in Kenneth Frampton’s anthology, American Masterworks (Rizzoli, 2008). 20+22 Renwick, a proposal for an 11-story building that challenges NYC zoning interpretation, received a Progressive Architecture Award Citation in 2001. In 2014, LATENT Productions received an AIANY Honor Award for Runner&Stone, a bakery-bar-restaurant in Gowanus, NY.

LATENT’s concrete Belly Blocks, cast into flour sacks emptied by the baker, were a finalist in Architizer’s “A+ Awards, Architecture + Materials,” and the design of the restaurant was selected as NYC Archtober’s “Building of the Day” in 2014. In 2015, Latent’s Constellation Park project placed third in an international competition for new ways of memorializing the dead. A model of the project was sold by Christie’s at a charity auction and displayed at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. In 2016, LATENT and DeathLAB won an international competition for the “First Future Cemetery” in Bristol, England.

In 2015, Rothstein was honored by Built by Women New York City (BxW NYC), an organization that celebrates the leadership and achievements of women working in the building professions. Rothstein and Kartik Chandran received an Earth Institute Cross Cutting Initiative grant to perform a scientific study of anaerobic bioconversion as a new method to decompose human remains. She was also named a finalist in the J.M. Kaplan Innovation Prize. Supported by the Jacob Javits Fellowship in Fine Arts from 1988–1992, William Kinne Traveling Fellowship in 1992, and the New York Foundation for the Art in 2000, Rothstein’s professional and academic work has been exhibited at multiple venues and featured in various publications. These include: Storefront for Art and Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Barnard College, Columbia University, Van Alen Institute, Max Protetch Gallery, the Center for Architecture, Sir John Soane’s Museum, architizer.com, Gizmodo, Architecture magazine, Casabella, The New York Times, London Financial Times, National Public Radio, OZY.com, Wallpaper City Guide NYC, WIREDjp, and Uncube.