The architect of the future is choral and curious

Interview with Carlo Ratti

Architect and urban planner, founder of the studio Carlo Ratti Associates, is among the ten most cited theorists in articles and research dealing with urban planning. Among the first to investigate the connection between the natural and artificial world, and the interaction between urban design and technology.

Carlo Ratti will be the curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, whose title will be Intelligent. Natural. Artificial. Collective., which brings us back to an increasingly human and at the same time numerical dimension, as well as inclusive of the next biennial, declaring the need for a radical change in our profession.

In this interview Carlo Ratti will tell us how the figure of the architect is changing and how artificial intelligence is impacting our profession.

OS You have chosen the word “Intelligens” as the title of the next Architecture Biennale, which means to grasp, collect, read in depth. Intelligens also contains the word “gens”, a Latin word with many meanings and which refers to concepts such as nation, people, but also humanity or tribe. The intent to narrate a new architecture that from a design practice becomes almost a posture is immediately clear. Can you tell us how you imagine this new way of doing architecture, what the role of the architect will be and how you imagine the latter being able to collaborate with experts from other sectors?

CR It's true. Today, when we talk about intelligence, everyone thinks of AI and ChatGPT. At the Biennale, it seemed important to us to explore the multiplicity of intelligences – natural, artificial, collective – that have helped us shape the built environment for thousands of years. An important theme especially today, at a time when we have to deal with climate change that seems to have accelerated significantly in recent years. Let's not forget that – as the Abbe Laugier theorized in the eighteenth century with his idea of ​​a “primitive hut” – architecture begins when the climate is adverse to us. In the coming years, only architecture will be able to help us adapt to a changing climate.

As architects and urban planners, we need to transform our professional approach from an egocentric to an ecocentric vision: considering people and ecosystems as a single community.
The role of the architect must evolve: no longer a solitary creator, but rather a conductor, capable of collaborating with experts from other disciplines – from biology to physics, from computer science to philosophy.

OS The design process from static and tied to a single designer becomes increasingly collective, hybrid, participatory and inclusive, thus giving life to open projects that can reconfigure themselves over time and perhaps adapt to constantly changing contexts. What are the limits – if there are any – for this type of approach in today's city? What actions can be taken immediately so that this way of designing becomes practice?

CR In 2014 I published, together with Matthew Claudel, Open Source Architecture, a book in which we described our vision of the future of our profession: moving away from the vision of the hero architect, the demiurge who brings down from above his vision without caring about the world before him, to a collective architect. We called this new professional figure “choral architect”.

These are difficult changes – also because of an educational system characterized in many countries by disciplinary segregation. I believe that the starting point must be precisely the rethinking of training starting from interdisciplinarity. After all, the project – creating new worlds on a human and urban scale – is the perfect moment to bring together different knowledge.

OS In your projects and as the title of the next Biennale underlines, you have always kept together nature and artifice, tradition and new technologies. How do you integrate digital data and the use of AI within your way of designing and what you hope for the future of the profession? Are there emerging technologies that you think could revolutionize the sector?

CR Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital data go hand in hand – one does not exist without the other. As for AI, it is a technology that has several decades of research behind it and many fields of application. Today, however, when we say AI, many people think of ChatGPT. It is a new and very powerful tool, but with great limitations. We could say that ChatGPT is the equivalent of an “idiot savant”: it knows everything, but does not imagine anything completely new. This ability to imagine the future, to create what does not exist, remains the exclusive prerogative of human beings.

As the great Bruno Zevi wrote: “Authentic artists, creators of language, are always very few; they are surrounded by a group of men of letters who build correctly, but in prose, not in poetry.” Artificial intelligence may be a formidable tool, but the poetry of innovation is still up to us.
Ultimately, the city is not just an assemblage of bits and atoms, but the place where dreams, visions and hopes turn into reality.

OS Can you tell us what your approach is to teaching and training new generations of architects and what skills do you think are most important today?

CR As we were saying, I believe that the project is fundamental to encourage the meeting of different disciplines. At MIT, we encourage students to combine multidisciplinary knowledge and to work in teams. Curiosity is the fundamental skill to face a rapidly changing world: only with curiosity and the ability to find innovative solutions can we face – together – the new problems that climate change, for example, is putting before us.

OS Archweb.com is a national portal whose readers are mainly students and architects, designers and in general design professionals. If you could leave them a message, what would it be?

CR I would use a few words from the film Jules & Jim by François Truffaut. In one scene, Jim recounts the dialogue with his professor Albert Sorel: “Mais alors, que dois-je devenir ?” — “A Curieux.” — “Ce n'est pas un métier.” — “It's still a journey. Voyagez, écrivez, traduisez…, apprenez à vivre partout. Commencez tout de suite. L'avenir est aux curieux de profession.” Here, "Travel, write, translate, learn to live anywhere, and start immediately. The future will be for the professionally curious."