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

‘The dream becomes true because someone already saw your dream and shared it.’ 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. ‘Designing the future is no longer about a fixed masterplan,’ Ratti noted. ‘It is about projecting a series of possibilities—dreaming with data to create spaces that learn and evolve. We are moving toward a senseable architecture that reacts to our presence before we even realize we need it. Technology allows us to dream in real-time, creating feedback loops between citizens and their city that were previously impossible.’ 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.‘ 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. ‘We realize that a building must be a vessel for the human spirit,’ he explained. ‘To design the future, we must project our internal landscapes onto the city. We are not just building machines for living; we are building dream machines that carry our cultural and emotional history into the next century. If the architecture does not dream, the people living within it will lose their ability to do so as well.’

‘If the architecture does not dream, the people living within it will lose their ability to do so as well’

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 green 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.’

This post-human imagination was a recurring theme. The architects agreed that the ego of the ‘Master Architect’ must be replaced by the ‘Facilitator of Ecosystems’. Ratti added to this by noting, ‘The dream is not just the building; it is the infrastructure that allows the ecosystem to thrive. When we use sensors to monitor the health of a vertical forest, we are eavesdropping on the dreams of the trees. Through this, we are turning the present of our cities or our buildings into something hopefully better… turning the present into what it ought to be.’

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.’

As 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: ‘To put your eye in the eyes of the other living species that are cohabiting with you.’ 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