Where no one has gone before: conversation with Italo Rota and Carlo Ratti
BIT SPECIAL TALKS

Where no one has gone before: conversation with Italo Rota and Carlo Ratti

05/11/21 h 12:00 - 13:00

Produced by Business International in collaboration with Salesforce


From a famous sentence from the historic Star Trek theme song about travelling beyond any known universe, a conversation-workshop about imagining places in the extended present, their unforeseeable interaction with new technologies and the data that humans and non-humans are producing, to experience them.

Speakers

Carlo Ratti

Architect, urban planner, architectural theorist and Italian academic, teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he directs the MIT Senseable City Lab

An architect and engineer by training, Professor Carlo Ratti teaches at MIT, where he directs the Senseable City Laboratory, and is a founding partner of the international design and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati. A leading voice in the debate on new technologies’ impact on urban life, his work has been exhibited in several venues worldwide, including the Venice Biennale, New York’s MoMA, London’s Science Museum, Barcelona’s Design Museum and Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. Three of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion, the Copenhagen Wheel and Scribit– were hailed by Time Magazine as ‘Best Inventions of the Year’. He has been included in Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List: 50 people who will change the world’. He is currently serving as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization.

Italo Rota

Architect, Studio Italo Rota & Partners

Italo Rota Building Office is an international architectural office based in Milano, Italy. With over thirty years of constant and advanced multidisciplinary research, IRBO develops innovative projects where humanistic beauty and sustainability are integrated in fields that extend to contemporary art and robotics. Aiming at the priority of achieving new living systems for the city of the “extreme present”, IRBO applies the most advanced technologies collaborating with labs, design firms and international universities. The office counts on the balance between art and science in its design research, creating a poetic manifestation that sustains the creation of projects with a new notion of beauty, a notion that according to Gardner “is the capacity of generating interest by a memorable form and an attitude of evoking further explorations.” IRBO was founded by Italo Rota (1953, Milano) who is a graduate of the polytechnic university of Milan. Upon winning the competition to design the interiors of Musée d’Orsay in the 80s, Rota moved to Paris working on many important projects in France among; the renovation of the museum of Contemporary art at the “Centre Pompidou”, with Gae Aulenti, the hall of the French school at Cour Carré of The Louvre museum, the lighting of Notre-Dame Cathedral, the lighting of the banks of the Seine river in Paris and the renovation of the historical center of the city of Nantes. Rota returned to Milano in the 90s to become one of the leading architects of a new architecture, designing important projects in Italy and the world. More recently, IRBO has designed the civic museums of Reggio Emilia, the new Elatech robot factory in Brembilla, the grand children theatre in Maciachini Milano, the new pavilion laboratory Noosphere at the Triennale di Milano, The pavilion of Kuwait at EXPO Milano 2015, the pavilion of Italian wine and the pavilion of Arts and Foods. Among IRBO’s symbolic projects, the Museo del Novecento in Piazza Duomo in Milan, the headquarters of Columbia University in New York, the Hindu Temple in Dolvy in India. The office worked on exhibitions in major museums, publications, installations and pavilions, including the Pavilion central theme for Expo Zaragoza 2008. Rota is the Scientific Director of NABA, New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, lecturer at Shanghai Wusong International Art City Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Advisor at the Tsinghua University of Beijing, one of the most prestigious Chinese universities. Italo Rota has been awarded several prizes, including the Gold Medal for Italian Architecture for the spaces public, the Gold Medal to the Italian Architecture for Culture and Leisure, the Landmark Conservancy Prize, New York and the Grand Prix de l'Urbanisme, Paris.

Chairman

Carlo Antonelli

CEO, Fiera Milano Media

A graduate in Law from the University of Genoa, Antonelli is a cultural producer in various fields. From 1993 to 2003 he was artistic director of Caterina Caselli's Sugar Music (in time to invent the hits of Bocelli and Elisa). From 2006 to 2011 he was editor-in-chief of the Italian edition of Rolling Stone magazine (previously, from 2003, he was its editorial director). From August 2011 to June 2013 he directed the Italian edition of Wired and invented the Wired Next Fest festival. In July 2013, he became editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine GQ where he launched the first edition of the GQ Freak Out festival. He also has significant experience in the world of museums, as a consultant to the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa and as curator of the Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art in Genoa. In 2011, with Luca Guadagnino, he founded the film company First Sun (for which he is among the producers of “I am Love” in 2010 - nominated for an Academy Award - and “Suspiria” in 2018, as well as serving as general counsel for “Call Me by My Name” in 2017 - nominated in 2018 and winner of the Academy Award for Best Non-Original Screenplay). Among his various professional activities, Antonelli has published essays and articles in Italian and international magazines (including Flash Art, Domus, Abitare, Vogue Italia, the French Purple, the German O32°C and the Dutch Fantastic Man). He has also taught Sociology of Consumption at the University of Bologna and the University of Genoa. Since 2018, he has been CEO of Fiera Milano Media SpA.