Carlo Ratti had a lecture at IAAC the previous week under the title ¨Senseable cities¨. During his lecture he presented to the audience the last projects that his office is developing and he gave us an idea about the research developed at the Senseable City Lab that he directs in MIT. Carlo Ratti is specialy interested on how a city could fuction in real time, were the physical could be responsive to the real time information.
An architect and engineer by training, Carlo Ratti practices in Italy and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he directs the Senseable City Lab. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK. Ratti has co-authored over 200 publications and holds several patents. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, GAFTA in San Francisco and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. His Digital Water Pavilion at the 2008 World Expo was hailed by Time Magazine as one of the Best Inventions of the Year.
In June 2007 the Italian Minister of Culture named Carlo Ratti as a member of the Italian Design Council – an advisory board to the Italian Government that includes 25 leaders of design in Italy. He was also named 2009 Inaugural Innovator in Residence by the Queensland Government, included in Esquire Magazine’s ‘2008 Best & Brightest’ list and in Thames&Hudson’s selection of ‘60 innovators’ shaping our creative future.
In 2010 Blueprint Magazine selected him as one of the ‘25 People Who Will Change the World of Design’ and Forbes listed him as one ofthe ‘Names You Need To Know’ in 2011. He was recently a presenter atTED 2011 and is serving as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Urban Management.
