ma yansong, carlo ratti, and stefano boeri share phase in milan’
The dream ends up being true because somebody already saw your dream. They shared your dream.’ Set against the backdrop of designboom’s ROOM FOR DREAMS during Milan Design Week 2026, 3 of the world’s most prominent architectural visionaries– Stefano Boeri, Carlo Ratti, and Ma Yansong– collected to go over dream projections with designboom’s Managing Editor Claire Brodka. As leaders in city forestry, smart-city technology, and natural urbanism, the designers shared a phase together for the very first time to check out how their discipline can move beyond static building and construction to end up being a proactive force, creating the future before it in fact shows up.
The words Ma Yansong utilizes to begin the discussion set the tone and hint at the consensus of architecture as a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. Stefano Boeri, the founding partner of Stefano Boeri Architetti, has actually spent decades showing that cities can breathe through his ‘Bosco Verticale’ models. Carlo Ratti, who leads his eponymous practice as well as the Senseable City Laboratory at MIT, has redefined the city as a living network of information and human interaction.Yansong, the principal of MAD Architects and Visitor Editor of Domus 2026, has regularly promoted an architecture that feels like a landscape of the soul. Together, they represent a combined front versus the stagnancy of traditional city preparation.
claire brodka,
ma yasong, carlo ratti, and stefano boeri on stage|all images © designboom, photography by Camilla Mansini with Giorgio Gagliano space for dreams panel reframes Architecture as projection The discussion started with an essential deconstruction of architectural timing. In a world characterized by rapid environment shifts and technological acceleration, the participants argued that architecture should work as a predictive tool rather than a simple materialization of the present moment. Carlo Ratti opened the conversation by suggesting that the ‘dream’ is no longer an ambiguous principle however a data-driven crucial. ‘We require a process that is similar to development. We belong to nature, we operate by feedback. In some cases you run with dreams, or fixations. What we should do is develop a way that dreams can develop into a development community.’ Ratti’s viewpoint reframes the architect as a facilitator of a living system, where the ‘dream’ is a continuously updated forecast of human and device requirements. ‘This passage in between impossibility, plausibility, and possibility is really interesting,‘ Stefano Boeri agreed. To make dreams real, he argues, architects need to ‘funnel imagination into a grid of rules.’
Ma Yansong expanded on this by focusing on the emotional company of area, aligning with the principle of structures as ‘active individuals’ in our trajectory. For Yansong, the forecast is not just technical however deeply spiritual. ‘In some cases I try to make the present vanish. We talk about future, but it’s difficult to specify. Often we call something that we are not knowledgeable about the future. I attempt to study and borrow from those two ends of time,‘ he described. ‘This atmosphere is what I want to produce. To make this beacon of time and area that individuals at the start perhaps don’t feel comfy with however eventually they have the liberty to discover themselves.‘
‘What we ought to do is establish a way that dreams can develop into an innovation community ‘speakers highlight environmental TRAJECTORY AND NON-HUMAN AGENCY The conversation shifted towards the agency of the non-human, an important pillar of the space FOR DREAMS idea. Stefano Boeri brought the focus to the biological need of architectural dreaming, arguing that the most immediate ‘dream forecast’ is the total reforestation of the urban world. He reframed the building not as a shelter for human beings, but as an active environmental provider. ‘We are forecasting a future where the city is a forest,’ Boeri stated. ‘Our structures need to serve as active participants in the world’s survival by offering the trees and the air a seat at the design table. In the Bosco Verticale, the dream was to prove that biodiversity is not an accessory, but a requirement for urban life. When we forecast these dreams, we are acknowledging that the non-human– the plants, the bugs, the birds– has a trajectory and a desire that we must appreciate and incorporate. To put your eye in the eyes of the other living species that are cohabiting with you.‘
This post-human creativity was a recurring theme. As Carlo Ratti expands on his deal with the Senseable City Laboratory, modern style is checking out ‘polyamory’ in the home– incorporating nature, animals, and bacteria into human environments. This requires compassion: ‘It is the method you can produce relationships with plants, animals, and so on. And it ends up being a directing concept. But you should constantly understand what might be the ethical effects of a few of our decisions.‘
Boeri Studio’s Bosco Verticale in Milan|image thanks to Boeri Studio, photography by Dimitar Harizanov highlighting style empathy and product As the panel progressed, the conversation turned towards the products themselves. If we decenter the human, what takes place to the steel, the concrete, and the lumber? Ma Yansong proposed that products bring an intrinsic ‘desire’ to go back to natural forms. ‘The future shows up when our products stop pretending to be static,’ Yansong described. ‘In our work, we attempt to let the product follow its own trajectory, to look like it was shaped by wind or water rather than a blueprint. This is how we forecast a future that feels natural even if it is highly crafted.’ Boeri concurred, keeping in mind that the ‘desire’ of a product in a psychological provider is to sustain life. ‘The agency of the material is discovered in its capability to CO2-absorb, to provide shade, to cool the air. When we forecast these functions into our designs, we are aligning human dreams with the biological reality of the planet.’
The takeaway of the discussion lies in its rejection to accept the status quo. While their techniques differ– Ratti through data, Boeri through biology, and Yansong through spiritual kind– their goal is the same. By dealing with architecture as a vessel for both human and non-human dreams, Boeri, Ratti, and Yansong offer a roadmap for a future that is not just built, however predicted through compassion and ecological company.
Carlo Ratti Associati and BIG teamed up for CapitaSpring in Singapore|image by Finbarr Fallon