Carlo Ratti

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

Additionally, he holds positions as Distinguished Professor in the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano and Honorary Professor at TTPU Tashkent.

Ratti was named one of the "50 most influential designers in America" by Fast Company and highlighted in Wired magazine's "Smart List: 50 people who will change the world". Ratti has been featured in Esquire magazine's "Best & Brightest" list and in Thames & Hudson's selection of "60: Innovators Shaping our Creative Future". Blueprint magazine included him as one of the "25 People Who Will Change Architecture and Design", Forbes listed him as one of the "Names You Need To Know". In December 2023, Carlo Ratti was appointed by outgoing president Roberto Cicutto as curator of the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture, opening in 2025.

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

In 2000, he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a Fulbright scholar, working with Hiroshi Ishii at the MIT Media Lab.

In a 2011 TED talk in Long Beach Ratti outlined the vision of an "architecture that senses and responds". Digital technologies are becoming networked and atomised, hence changing the interaction between humans and the built environment. It is as if our cities, buildings and objects were starting to "talk back to us". In a discussion with architect Peter Cook as part of the Royal College of Art 2011/2012 Architecture Lecture Series in London, Ratti traced back his vision to Michelangelo's "why don't you speak to me?" and to the Baroque and Art Nouveau periods.

Ratti's work includes The Copenhagen Wheel developed by MIT Senseable City Lab explores how any bicycle could be transformed into a network-connected e-bike by simply changing a wheel hub. The project Trash Track uses electronic tracking to better understand and optimise flows of waste through cities. He has also opened a research centre in Singapore as part of an MIT-led initiative on the Future of Urban Mobility.

Ratti's work has been seminal in intelligent or smart cities. In an article published in Scientific American together with Anthony M. Townsend, however, Ratti contrasts the prevailing technocratic vision of smart cities – highlighting instead the "human face" of urban technologies and their potential in promoting bottom-up social empowerment.