Carlo Ratti, founder of MIT's Senseable City Lab and head of Carlo Ratti Associati, is an architect, engineer, inventor, educator and activist who is designing the future of the connected city.
Ratti has co-authored over 250 publications and his work has been exhibited in venues including the Venice Biennale, MoMA in New York City and MAXXI in Rome.
He was included in the 2012 WIRED "Smart List" and in *BLUEPRINT'*s "25 People who will Change the World of Design." Ratti is also curator for the Future Food District at Expo Milano 2015.
Ratti will be speaking on the main stage at our flagship event, WIRED2015 on October 15-16. He will take part in a session that discusses building social impact, alongside Martha Lane Fox and Claudio Sassaki.
WIRED spoke to Ratti about his work, inspirations and his plans for the future.
What are you planning to speak about at WIRED2015?
I will present in general some of the works we are carrying out both at the Senseable City Lab at MIT and at our office Carlo Ratti Associati. Both focus on how new technologies are changing the way we understand, design and ultimately live in cities. I will then particularly focus on one of our projects, Underworlds, which collects and analyses biochemical information from sewage water.
Underworlds aims to characterise a city's microbiome (the vast community of microbes that lives in the human body) and ultimately "see epidemics before they happen." We have just started testing this monitoring system in Boston -- and will start expanding it to other cities in 2016.
What would you like to achieve by speaking at WIRED2015?
Exploring, together with other speakers, some of the most exciting frontiers of our time. In particular, the frontiers between the physical, digital and -- increasingly -- the biological world.
Who are you looking forward to hearing and/or meeting at WIRED2015?
Everyone -- especially the people I do not know yet!
What will the world look like in 2020? And what do you think might be the most significant developments over the next five years?
The internet, which by then will have entered not only into our lives, but also into our bodies. The so-called "internet of everything"
In general I refrain from predicting the future -- most often a useless exercise. Conversely, I think that we should focus more on design, which -- as Herbert Simon said -- "devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." As such, design is the best way not to predict the future, but to help create it.
What’s next for Carlo Ratti?
Exploring not only the interface between the digital and the physical –-- but also the biological.
WIRED2015 takes place on October 15-16 at Tobacco Dock in London, E1W. Last year's event sold out, so secure your place now. WIRED subscribers save 10 per cent on tickets. We also have a limited number of half-price tickets available for startups and registered charities. For more information or to register, please visit http://www.wiredevent.co.uk/wired-2015.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
