Design – GSAPP | DeathLAB

DESIGN

Our mission is to transform spaces of remembrance, seamlessly incorporating them into civic infrastructure in respectful, sustainable, and innovative ways. DeathLAB establishes scientific, socio-cultural, academic, and municipal partnerships, engaging design to unite diverse constituents and reshape how cities accommodate their dead. We will augment current practices and desegregate the landscapes of conventional burial and cremation from active, public terrains. The Lab’s proposals include sponsored investigations, projects produced in Karla Rothstein’s design studios at Columbia University GSAPP, and theoretical work of LATENT Productions.

FEATURED PROJECTS

Through our design work we are provoking and unpacking diverse perspectives on the urban and social significance of death-related spatial practices and their intersections with civic life and environment. Our projects harness science and spirituality, resulting in a system that transforms our biomass into an enduring collective urban memorial for intimate individual memories.

SYLVAN CONSTELLATION

At Arnos Vale Cemetery, we propose an ecologically beneficial infrastructure for human disposition that enhances public space while re-shaping societal understandings of our body’s connection to the earth and culture’s relationship to death...

Read More

CONSTELLATION PARK

Constellation Park is a suspended public memorial, invoking science while respecting spirituality. The system transforms our biomass into an elegant constellation of light, illuminating new civic space amidst underutilized existing urban infrastructures...

Read More

WPA 2.0

A resilient infrastructure of short-term shrines dedicated to remembrance, remediation, and energy conversion rises above the city offering loved ones a contemplative stroll, while the deceased are transformed into a new form of vibrant energy...

Read More

180701_Exterior_Sakura

STUDIO WORK

Over the past eighteen years, a series of Rothstein’s design studios at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation have engaged the urban, social, and cultural questions engaged by DeathLAB’s research. Students have focused on urban sites throughout New York City, with architectural proposals that address the contemporary shortcomings of current funerary processes. An important part of design thinking is to instigate critical conversation about future possibilities.

Rothstein_khloe + Rory_existing burial on Hart Island

WHAT REMAINS VISIBLE

Rory Peckham, Khloe Swanson
Civic-Sacred: Life, Death, and Liminality

A living burial landscape emerges from what has long been unseen, weaving mycelium, bodies, and collective memory into a regenerative ground. On Hart Island, forests, meadows, and intimate structures collaborate in cycles of decomposition and care, transforming burial into a communal act of repair where land, ritual, and material production reconnect life and death through shared stewardship.

Read More

Rothstein_Jordan + Bryce_Sp25 final_Terramation Terracing_Perspective

CEMETERIAL POROSITIES: TERRAMATION TERRACING

Bryce Emerson, Jordan Howard
Civic-Sacred: Life, Death, and Liminality

At Green-Wood Cemetery, terramation nodes are woven into a seasonally responsive landscape, reframing death as an ecological and relational process. Situated within the Dell Water, adaptive structures and harvested materials cultivate spaces for grief that shift between intimacy and collectivity, where care for the deceased, the living, and the land unfolds through cycles of maintenance, transformation, and shared stewardship.

Read More

Rothstein_Franco + Andrea_PERSPECTIVE SECTION (TOWER) compressed

REMNANT(S’) INTERACTION

Franco Nocioni, Andrea Zamora
Civic-Sacred: Life, Death, and Liminality

Remnant(s’) Interaction explores burial and mourning as evolving rituals shaped by both corporeal remains and digital afterlives. As bodies return to soil and data persists in the cloud, the project proposes a liminal spatial framework where grief unfolds through ongoing interactions with digital imprints, positioning memory as a distributed ecology sustained by human care, technological infrastructures, and more-than-human continuity.

Read More

ARCH_Rothstein_LincolnAntonio_MarcelaRueda_SU18(2)

VIRTUAL SOUL

Lincoln Antonio + Marcela Rueda
Civic-Sacred: Life, Death, and Liminality

This intervention redefines the relationship between nature, architecture, and technology in order to change people’s perspective on the physical presence of death. Existing barriers are breached, and the cemetery is reintroduced into urbanity.

Read More

ARCH_Rothstein_ Michael McDowell_SP18 _01_secti

RE(ORIENT)

Michael McDowell
Civic-Sacred: Life, Death, and Liminality

Re(orient) is a space for interring, remembering and departing the dead. The project re-imagines the natural burial process within an urban context in order to resolve environmental and logistical issues associated with other disposition methods. It addresses a broader need for non-sectarian sanctuary spaces while also presenting an acceptance of death as a natural process. In creating clearings within a dense three-dimensional field condition, Re-orient composes moments of both spatial orientation and uncertainty. These spaces shape varying degrees of human intimacy and connection.

Read More

ARCH Rothstein_Audrey Hampton Christopher Deega(1)

MNEMONIC TEMPORALITY

Chris Deegan + Audrey Hampton
Civic-Sacred: Life, Death, and Liminality

Entropy in the natural world is necessary for re-ordering and continuance; a fundamental phase of the biological cycle where material loss transforms the corporeal to the sublime. The project represents a shift in the societal practices surrounding death and its presence, or absence, in the city. The archive facilitates a more humanitarian and environmentally sustainable ritual for remembrance, allowing tangible post-mortem practices to enable the continued ephemeral collective experience of urban life.

Read More

DESIGN SEMINAR

"Interlaced Existence: Death, Life, Liminality", Rothstein’s design seminar at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation investigates the material and temporal aspects of mortality, scrutinizing intricate connections across all scales of life, death, and design. We posit that mortality is agency, and that life and death are elegantly intertwined. Through close reading, precise writing, critical conversation, and independent research, you will unpack and re-frame diverse conventions, rituals, and priorities: those both culturally valued and under siege.