Carlo Ratti has been announced as Chief Curator for the 2019 Shenzhen Bi-City Biennial of Urbanism/Architecture. He will join Academic Curators Politecnico di Torino and South China University to critically explore the impact of artificial intelligence on communities and urban space.
The team will investigate “how our relationship with the city might change when buildings become able to respond to our presence.” Ratti’s expertise in the area of future technology and artificial intelligence is reflected in his role within the MIT Senseable City Lab, whose experiments propagate future scenarios for the built environment.
Sensors and networks have been blanketing our cities for a few decades now. However, thanks to advances in deep learning and imaging, we are now reaching an unprecedented scenario, whereby architectural space is acquiring the ability to ‘see’: it can potentially recognize us and autonomously react to our presence. What can the consequences of this new scenario be on urban life? We believe it will dramatically change our relationship with architecture and physical space – and we would like to propose this question for exploration at the 2019 UABB.
-Carlo Ratti
The team will reflect on the accelerated growth in artificial intelligence throughout the last two decades, and the emergence of the Internet of Things. They will reflect on how these radical changes have impacted on the built environment, with a particular focus on China where technological advancements such as AI and facial recognition have allowed the built environment to sense people’s needs in real time.
The event will draw on Shenzhen’s unique features, from its geopolitical status between Hong Kong and the rest of the Pearl River Delta, to its rapid urbanization and position as a hub of innovation. The 2019 UABB will use these features as a starting point to “reimagine the relationship between new technologies and urban futures.
The team is seeking contributions for an open platform for human recognition, on the topic of the “eyes of the city” which can be addressed to uabb2018@carloratti.com.
The 8th edition of the Urbanism\Architecture Bi-City Biennale will open in Shenzhen, China, in late 2019 and will run until Spring 2020.
Chief Curators: Carlo Ratti, Meng Jianmin, Fabio Cavallucci
Academic Curator: South China-Torino Lab (SCUT - Sun Yimin; Politecnico di Torino - Michele Bonino)
Co-Curators: Science and Human Imagination Center of Southern University of Science and Technology (Wu Yan), Politecnico di Milano (Adalberto del Bo)
Executive Curators: Daniele Belleri [CRA], Edoardo Bruno, Chen Qiufan, Manuela Lietti, Wang Kuan, Xu Haohao, Zhang Li
News via: Carlo Ratti Associati
