ma yansong, carlo ratti, and stefano boeri share stage in milan

‘The dream becomes true because someone already saw your dream. They shared your dream.’ Set against the backdrop of designboom’s ROOM FOR DREAMS during Milan Design Week 2026, three of the world’s most influential architectural visionaries – Stefano Boeri, Carlo Ratti, and Ma Yansong – gathered to discuss dream projections with designboom’s Managing Editor Claire Brodka. As leaders in urban forestry, smart-city technology, and organic urbanism, the architects shared a stage together for the very first time to explore how their discipline can move beyond static construction to become a proactive force, designing the future before it actually arrives.

The words Ma Yansong uses to kick off 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 spent decades proving that cities can breathe through his ‘Bosco Verticale’ prototypes. Carlo Ratti, who leads his eponymous practice as well as the Senseable City Lab at MIT, has redefined the city as a living network of data and human interaction.Yansong, the principal of MAD Architects and Guest Editor of Domus 2026, has consistently pushed for an architecture that feels like a landscape of the soul. Together, they represent a unified front against the stagnation of traditional urban planning.

claire brodka, ma yasong, carlo ratti, and stefano boeri on stage | all images © designboom, photography by Camilla Mansini with Giorgio Gagliano

room for dreams panel reframes Architecture as projection

The dialogue began with a fundamental deconstruction of architectural timing. In a world characterized by rapid climate shifts and technological acceleration, the participants argued that architecture must function as a predictive tool rather than a mere materialization of the current moment. Carlo Ratti opened the discussion by suggesting that the ‘dream’ is no longer a nebulous concept but a data-driven imperative. ‘We need a process that is similar to evolution. We are part of nature, we operate by feedback. Sometimes you operate with dreams, or obsessions. What we should do is develop a way that dreams can turn into an innovation ecosystem.’ Ratti’s perspective reframes the architect as a facilitator of a living system, where the ‘dream’ is a constantly updated projection of human and machine needs. ‘This passage between impossibility, plausibility, and possibility is very interesting,‘ Stefano Boeri agreed. To make dreams real, he argues, architects must ‘funnel imagination into a grid of rules.’

Ma Yansong expanded on this by focusing on the emotional agency of space, aligning with the concept of buildings as ‘active participants’ in our trajectory. For Yansong, the projection is not just technical but deeply spiritual. ‘Sometimes I try to make the present disappear. We talk about future, but it’s hard to define. Sometimes we call something that we are not familiar with the future. I try to study and borrow from those two ends of time,’ he explained. ‘This atmosphere is what I want to create. To make this beacon of time and space that people at the beginning maybe don’t feel comfortable with but eventually they have the freedom to find themselves.’

‘What we should do is develop a way that dreams can turn into an innovation ecosystem’

speakers highlight ECOLOGICAL TRAJECTORY AND NON-HUMAN AGENCY

The conversation shifted toward the agency of the non-human, an essential pillar of the ROOM FOR DREAMS concept. Stefano Boeri brought the focus to the biological necessity of architectural dreaming, arguing that the most urgent ‘dream projection’ is the total reforestation of the urban world. He reframed the building not as a shelter for humans, but as an active ecological carrier. ‘We are projecting a future where the city is a forest,’ Boeri stated. ‘Our buildings must act as active participants in the planet’s survival by giving 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 ornament, but a requirement for urban life. When we project these dreams, we are acknowledging that the non-human—the plants, the insects, the birds—has a trajectory and a desire that we must respect and integrate. To put your eye in the eyes of the other living species that are cohabiting with you.’ 

This post-human imagination was a recurring theme. As Carlo Ratti expands on his work with the Senseable City Lab, modern design is exploring ‘polyamory’ in the home—integrating nature, animals, and bacteria into human habitats. This requires empathy: ‘It is the way you can create relationships with plants, animals, and so on. And it becomes a guiding principle. But you should always be aware of what could be the ethical consequences of some of our decisions.’

Boeri Studio’s Bosco Verticale in Milan | image courtesy of Boeri Studio, photography by Dimitar Harizanov

highlighting design empathy and material

As the panel progressed, the discussion turned toward the materials themselves. If we decenter the human, what happens to the steel, the concrete, and the timber? Ma Yansong proposed that materials carry an inherent ‘desire’ to return to organic forms. ‘The future arrives when our materials stop pretending to be static,’ Yansong explained. ‘In our work, we try to let the material follow its own trajectory, to look like it was shaped by wind or water rather than a blueprint. This is how we project a future that feels natural even if it is highly engineered.’ Boeri concurred, noting that the ‘desire’ of a material in an emotional carrier is to sustain life. ‘The agency of the material is found in its ability to CO2-absorb, to provide shade, to cool the air. When we project these functions into our designs, we are aligning human dreams with the biological reality of the planet.’

The takeaway of the conversation lies in its refusal to accept the status quo. While their methods differ—Ratti through data, Boeri through biology, and Yansong through spiritual form—their goal is the same. By treating architecture as a vessel for both human and non-human dreams, Boeri, Ratti, and Yansong provide a roadmap for a future that is not just built, but projected through empathy and ecological agency.

Carlo Ratti Associati and BIG teamed up for CapitaSpring in Singapore | image by Finbarr Fallon

MAD Architect’s Lushui airport | image courtesy of MAD

MAD’s tunnel of light | image by Nacasa & Partners Inc.

AquaPraça, a floating cultural plaza designed by CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Höweler + Yoon | image by Leonardo Finotti

MAD Architects commission to design a kindergarten next to a senior citizens’ apartment in Beijing | image by Arch EXIST

Hanji House Pavilion by Stefano Boeri Architetti in Venice | image by Alice Clancy

project info:

architects: Ma Yansong | @madarchitects, Carlo Ratti | @carlorattiassociati, Stefano Boeri | @stefanoboeriarchitetti

The post the present as it ought to be: ma yansong, carlo ratti, and stefano boeri on designing the future appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.