Carlo Ratti

Carlo Ratti (born 1971 in Turin, Italy) is an Italian architect, engineer, inventor and author. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he leads the MIT Senseable City Lab. Ratti is also a founding partner of CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, a design and innovation company with offices in Turin, New York and London.

He also serves as a Distinguished Professor at the Politecnico di Milano and Honorary Professor at TTPU Tashkent. Ratti has earned many honors, including being named one of the "50 most influential designers in America" by Fast Company. He has also been featured in Wired magazine's "Smart List: 50 people who will change the world".

In December 2023, Ratti was chosen to be the curator of the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture, which will open in 2025. Many magazines and publications have highlighted his work, recognizing him as one of the leading thinkers shaping the future of architecture and design.

Education and early career

Carlo Ratti studied at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris and the Politecnico di Torino in Italy. He later earned his MPhil and PhD degrees from the Martin Centre at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

In 2000, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, known as MIT, as a Fulbright scholar. There, he worked with Hiroshi Ishii at the MIT Media Lab.

Vision

In a 2011 TED talk in Long Beach, California, Ratti shared his idea of an "architecture that senses and responds." He believes digital technologies are changing how we interact with buildings and cities, making them more like they can "talk back" to us.

Ratti’s projects include the Copenhagen Wheel, which turns any bicycle into a connected e-bike, and “Trash Track,” a project that uses tracking to improve how cities manage waste. He has also helped start a research center in Singapore focused on the future of how people move in cities. Ratti talks about smart cities, suggesting that technology should help people empower themselves rather than just control them.

Architecture and design

Carlo Ratti creates buildings and designs that mix technology with real-world spaces. One famous example is the Digital Water Pavilion at the World Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain. Here, streams of water open to let people walk through, and it was chosen as one of the best inventions of the year by Time magazine. Another project in Milan connects a fashion store with a green wall that brings nature inside.

Ratti also uses data to show information in creative ways. For example, he mapped the movement of people in Rome using cell phone data. He has shown designs at famous places like MoMA in New York City and created maps that rethink how we see the world.

In 2025, Ratti designed the torches for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. These torches are made from recycled materials and can be reused many times. They have a simple, clear design that shows the flame inside and come in two colors: one for the Olympics and one for the Paralympics.

Teaching and activism

Carlo Ratti has taught at many famous schools, including the Politecnico di Torino, the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, Harvard University, the Strelka Institute, and MIT. In 2004, he taught a class called "Urban Infoscape" at Harvard, which helped create the MIT Senseable City Lab. In 2011, he helped organize an event in Berlin for the BMW Guggenheim Lab. He also led programs at the Strelka Institute in Moscow.

While studying at the University of Cambridge, Ratti helped start a project to improve Italian universities. He has worked on many projects to protect important buildings and design in Italy and around the world. He has advised governments and given talks at important meetings, sharing his ideas about making cities better places to live.

Start-ups founded

Carlo Ratti created several new businesses in the United States and Europe.

In 2014, he helped start a company called Makr Shakr. This company makes robots that can serve drinks. These robots have been placed on Royal Caribbean cruise ships and in places like malls and hotels in the US, France, the UK, and Italy.

In 2018, Ratti also helped begin another company named Scribit. This company makes a portable robot that can draw on walls. In 2019, Scribit was chosen as one of Time magazine's top new ideas of the year.

Scientific contributions and writing

Carlo Ratti has written more than 500 publications, including a book called Opensource Architecture with Matthew Claudel, published by Einaudi in Italy and later by Thames&Hudson in English. He also wrote an essay titled The City of Tomorrow with Matthew Claudel for Yale University Press.

In one important paper in Environment and Planning B, Ratti looked at how we study cities using a method called Space Syntax. He has helped start research using cellphone data to learn about how cities work, which is now a big part of science. The MIT Senseable City Lab, where Ratti works, studies cities using networks and complex systems. He talked about these ideas in Seed magazine with mathematician Steven Strogatz.

Ratti also writes articles for many famous newspapers and magazines, such as Project Syndicate, Scientific American, The Architectural Review, La Stampa, BBC, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Domus, and Il Sole 24 Ore. In November 2019, he was on BBC Radio 4’s The Museum of Curiosity and suggested bringing a bionic arm to this imaginary museum.

Selected books

Carlo Ratti has written several interesting books about cities and technology. One book, Atlas of the Senseable City, was published in 2023 with Antoine Picon. Another book from 2016, The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life, looks at how cities might change with new technology.

Ratti also wrote Open Source Architecture in 2015 with Matthew Claudel, and Decoding the City: Urbanism in the Age of Big Data in 2014 with Dietmar Offenhuber. He also has an Italian book called Architettura Open Source: Verso una progettazione aperta from 2014. The MIT Senseable City Lab has been creating "Senseable City Guides" since 2011.