Carlo Ratti: The Latest Architecture and News

What happens when the sensor-imbued city acquires the ability to see – almost as if it had eyes? Ahead of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," Archdaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section at the Biennial to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies – and Artificial Intelligence in particular – might impact architecture and urban life. Here you can read the “Eyes of the City” curatorial statement by Carlo Ratti, the Politecnico di Torino and SCUT.

“We all live in an ecosystem; we just don’t know it. When it comes to urban areas, people have an ecological blind spot.” — Seth Magle, Director, Lincoln Park Zoo Urban Wildlife Institute, Chicago.

The advance of AI technologies can make it feel as if we know everything about our cities—as if all city dwellers are counted and accounted for, our urban existence fully monitored, mapped, and predicted.

What happens when the sensor-imbued city acquires the ability to see – almost as if it had eyes? Ahead of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," Archdaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section at the Biennial to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies – and Artificial Intelligence in particular – might impact architecture and urban life. Here you can read the “Eyes of the City” curatorial statement by Carlo Ratti, the Politecnico di Torino and SCUT. If you are interested in taking part in the exhibition at UABB 2019, submit your proposal to the “Eyes of the City” Open Call by May 31st, 2019: www.eyesofthecity.net

We live in a world full of electric products, and we have been influenced by them deeply, especially by those with digital screens, like cell phones, computers and TVs. We use computers for work and social media like Twitter and WeChat to connect with others, we use Mobike for short-distance commutes, Dianping to navigate us to a good lunch and then Alipay to pay the bill. At the end of a long day, we usually spend the rest of our time watching TV or playing online games in order to finally relax. These electric products bring convenience to our life, but at the same time, they are kidnapping it. The overuse of them immerses us in a virtual world and pushes people farther apart. We are losing face-to-face communication and ignoring the enjoyment of real life. Currently, people are spending more time on their mobile phones than ever before. According to a report published by Aier in 2018, the average screen time in China is 6 hours per day, and the average person uses their cellphone 108 times. This mobile-dependency is leaving our lives increasingly fragmented. 

What happens when the sensor-imbued city acquires the ability to see – almost as if it had eyes? Ahead of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," Archdaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section at the Biennial to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies – and Artificial Intelligence in particular – might impact architecture and urban life. Here you can read the “Eyes of the City” curatorial statement by Carlo Ratti, the Politecnico di Torino and SCUT. If you are interested in taking part in the exhibition at UABB 2019, submit your proposal to the “Eyes of the City” Open Call by May 31st, 2019: www.eyesofthecity.net

What happens when the sensor-imbued city acquires the ability to see – almost as if it had eyes? Ahead of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," Archdaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section at the Biennial to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies – and Artificial Intelligence in particular – might impact architecture and urban life. Here you can read the “Eyes of the City” curatorial statement by Carlo Ratti, the Politecnico di Torino and SCUT. If you are interested in taking part in the exhibition at UABB 2019, submit your proposal to the “Eyes of the City” Open Call by May 31st, 2019: www.eyesofthecity.net

What happens when the sensor-imbued city acquires the ability to see – almost as if it had eyes? Ahead of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," Archdaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section at the Biennial to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies – and Artificial Intelligence in particular – might impact architecture and urban life. Here you can read the “Eyes of the City” curatorial statement by Carlo Ratti, the Politecnico di Torino and SCUT. If you are interested in taking part in the exhibition at UABB 2019, submit your proposal to the “Eyes of the City” Open Call by May 31st, 2019: www.eyesofthecity.net

Opening ‪on December 15th, 2019 in Shenzhen, China, "Urban Interactions" is the 8th edition of the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB). The exhibition consists of two sections, namely “Eyes of the City” and “Ascending City”, which will explore the evolving relationship between urban space and technological innovation from different perspectives. The “Eyes of the City" section features MIT professor and architect Carlo Ratti as Chief Curator and Politecnico di Torino-South China University of Technology as Academic Curator. The "Ascending City" section features Chinese academician Meng Jianmin and Italian art critic Fabio Cavallucci as Chief Curators.

Archdaily is working with the "Eyes of the City" curatorial team, to publish a series of articles by international architects, designers, writers and thinkers who will discuss the ways in which new technologies - and Artificial Intelligence in particular - might impact architecture and urban life. The open call for proposals for the “Eyes of the City” will run from April 1st to May 31st: www.eyesofthecity.net

We, the curators of the Carlo Ratti/South China-Torino Lab (Politecnico di Torino-South China University of Technology CUT) team, are pleased to announce the Open Call for proposals to participate in the “Eyes of the City” exhibition section in the framework of the 2019 Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB). We invite international architects, planners, designers, philosophers, thinkers, scientists, companies, educational institutions, research laboratories, think-tanks and students to submit their proposals from April 1st to May 31st, 2019. The Open Call will accept proposals for design projects, research projects and critical essays that will form the core of the “Eyes of the City” exhibition section, that will be hosted in UABB’s main venue.

Download the information related to this competition here.

Architecture practice Carlo Ratti Associati has designed a low-cost prefabricated housing system for Indian non-profit WeRise. The new "Livingboard" system was made so that homeowners can build any structure they like on top of it. Made as a pilot project to encourage rural housing development, the system is being tested in a village outside Bangalore. As a portable "motherboard", the design provides homeowners prefabricated and flat-packed elements like waste management and water treatment systems.

Carlo Ratti has been announced as Chief Curator for the 2019 Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. He will join Academic Curators Politecnico di Torino and South China University to critically explore the impact of artificial intelligence on communities and urban space.

The team will investigate “how our relationship with the city might change when buildings become able to respond to our presence.” Ratti’s expertise in the area of future technology and artificial intelligence is reflected in his role within the MIT Senseable City Lab, whose experiments propagate future scenarios for the built environment.

Bio-Architecture Formosana (BAF) together with Carlo Ratti Associatti have won the international competition for the Southern branch of the Taiwan National Library and Repository in Tainan, Taiwan. With the concept of "Library as a Town", the team created a proposal for a new public building that will accommodate a library, book museum and a joint archives center. Selected among nine competitors, the winning design will be placed in the southern part of Taiwan in the XinYing District. The proposal is made to investigate the role of the library in the future.

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Carlo Ratti Associati, working in collaboration with Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, has unveiled their design for a modular paving system named “The Dynamic Street.” Intended to make streets “reconfigurable, safer, and more accessible to pedestrians, cyclists, and tomorrow’s self-driving vehicles,” the project will be on display at Sidewalk Lab’s office and experimentation space in Toronto throughout the summer of 2018.

Manifesting as a series of hexagonal modular pavers, the project explores the various patterns which can be created by reconfiguring modules, with a potential future “allowing a street to create an extra car lane during rush hour before then turning it into a pedestrian-only plaza in the evening.”

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Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) has unveiled Scribit, a “writing robot” which draws images and text on any wall surface, turning office, living, and bathroom walls into a blank canvas for artistic expression. Using in-built engines, Scribit can draw, cancel, and re-draw new content an infinite number of times, allowing users to print different images, messages, or feeds every day.

Scribit is always connected to the internet, allowing users to download, upload or source any online content. Operating in real time, Scribit immediately reproduces any data sent to it by the user, be it a restaurant posting the day’s menu, a financial firm posting stock market updates in its lobby, or an art enthusiast projecting their own content on the living room wall.

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Carlo Ratti Associati has teamed up with German engineer Schlaich Bergermann Partner and British design studio Atmos to design the world's tallest man-made structure. Nearly twice the height of the Burj Khalifa, the 1609-meter-tall tower was envisioned as a vertical "Central Park" clothed in vegetation and supported by a lightweight matrix of pre-stressed cables.

"Imagine you take New York's Central Park, turn it vertical, roll it and twirl it," said Carlo Ratti.