Carlo Ratti: The Latest Architecture and News

Opening in December in Shenzhen, China, the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture (UABB), organized by the cities of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, will discuss the theme of “Urban Interactions”. First to use Facial Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, the public exhibition will test new grounds to reflect on the impact of digital technologies on the urban environment.

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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.

Media Architecture is a merging of new technologies and the built form in order to explore narrative and to imbue character, to engage people and create new dialogues through a layer of meaningful experience. 

It isn’t a new concept - telling a story about a building through its form, particularly the facade of a building, has been around throughout history;- just think of York Minster’s stained glass windows, St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, and the Meenakshi Temple in Tamil Nadu.  What is exciting now is the opportunities brought about by technology to create new narratives and new forms of human interaction. 

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.

Ever since the Lumière brothers trained their camera on La Place des Cordeliers in Lyon in 1895, cinema has shaped our collective urban imagination. For 125 years, film has relentlessly recorded the deaths and lives of not just great American cities but of all great – and not so great – cities the world over. Film-makers have observed, expressed, characterized, interpreted and portrayed hundreds of thousands of city streets. By charting the cities’ evolution across the 20th century to present days, films are the quintessential Eyes on and of the City.

Italy has just unveiled its national pavilion, conceived by CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, Italo Rota Building Office, matteogatto&associati and F&M Ingegneria. In collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.A.E, the project is a metaphor for the journey from Italy to Dubai.

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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.

When the city has eyes to see, it will become the stuff of nightmares. The panopticon prophecy will come to life. Democracy will die.

The pretexts through which a thousand mechanisms that spy on us have been introduced into cities are three:

• security from thieves, criminals and terrorists;
• energy savings and performance optimization;
• the possibility of having structures that spontaneously understand our needs, without any requests on our part.

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 the 1991 Gulf War marked the beginning of electronic media warfare, the recent armed conflicts in the Middle East have highlighted an equally central role of social media. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have long been used to galvanize protest movements, organize assemblies, and spread information. During the decade from the Arab Spring movement to the Syrian civil war, the role of social media has grown from a utilitarian infrastructure to the principal medium of conflict. Today’s version of Jean Baudrillard’s “war porn” comes as battleground footage recorded by smartphones and drones mixed with propaganda messages and pop culture references to computer games and internet memes. As documented by the journalist Abdel Bari Atwan, mercenary groups plan military operations according to their expected media impact on followers, opponents, and foreign funders. Sometimes, fights are entirely staged to collect persuasive footage.

Carlo Ratti can be considered one of the great architectural innovators of our time. The founder of Carlo Ratti Associati, and Director at the MIT Senseable City Lab, Ratti champions the power of new technologies to transform both how we live, and how we design. The act of “convergence” is central to Ratti’s architectural outlook, whether it be the convergence of bits and atoms, or natural and artificial, or human and technology. Moreover, he believes that this convergence can reframe the design process, and engage citizens in discussions on what kind of city they want to live in.

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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.

Nowadays materials are requested to play a more engaging role in the digital society.

They can be customized down to their molecular properties and this capacity has an enormous impact on related fields of science, but they also need to be interpreted in their meaning thanks to our ‘semantic capital’, as Luciano Floridi said.

We cannot reduce materials to their property and performances as, as humans, we use them to interpret the world, they are our continuously changing material culture to find an equilibrium between nature and built environment.

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.

Thanks to the development of the digital world, cities can be part of natural history. This is our great challenge for the next few decades.

The digital revolution should allow us to promote an advanced, ecological and human world. Being digital was never the goal–it was a means to reinvent the world. But what kind of world?

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.

The human body, at least in terms of anthropomorphic ideals, was in the centre of western architectural debates from Greco-Roman times up to the Renaissance. Although the very concept of the body didn't come as explicit in traditional architecture writing in the east, the notion that the body (or, the envelope of the soul) connects the mind and the physical world was constantly revisited and reinterpreted.

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.

Videos

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Carlo Ratti Associati's spin-off company Scribit has partnered with leading artist Olafur Eliasson's Little Sun non-profit to draw a crowdsourced illustration of the sun's path in thousands of people's homes. Write&erase robot Scribit works as a smart vertical plotter to create illustrations inspired by sun path charts. The two teams hope to bring the climate crisis center stage and instigate change for the future of the planet.

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.

Based on research conducted as part of the Computational Design (CoDe) degree at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, we argue that large-scale rapid urban developments in combination with vast amounts of data are beyond human comprehension and consequently need to be synthesized when designed.

Videos

Bar producer Makr Shakr has unveiled new rooftop robotic bars in Milan and London. Founded by MIT professor Carlo Ratti, the company's new projects are made to engage with the city and explore the potential of technology. In Milan, the project is the city's first robotic bar, while the London bar is on display at the Barbican as part of its AI: More than Human exhibition. Makr Shakr's bars aim to combine barman roots with food tech around the future of human-machine collaboration.

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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.

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.

Videos

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.