Redesigning the Sails of Scampia by thinking with those who will inhabit them

But that utopia has turned into dystopia, not least because of the failure to involve the target community. Among architects and town planners, today the Sails are likened to experiences such as the residential complexes, later demolished, of Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis or Robin Hood Gardens in London: lofty social visions that turned into their nemesis. One of the buildings, the Celestial Sail, will not only remain standing, but become the focus of an innovative design experiment, which aims to reimagine it with the help of the local community. A community that - despite the social stigma and condition of extreme segregation in which it has lived for a long time - has found in the Vele a profound sense of 'home' and has fought to see it 'reborn' in the course of the process initiated by the municipality with Pnrr resources.

The programme is implemented via a digital platform promoted by the municipality. The diverse community of Scampia is invited to contribute spatial ideas, memories or personal stories. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools - including the drawing software Midjourney - translate those inputs into visual sketches: shared courtyards, flexible facades, redesigned entrances. Each proposal stems from lived experience.

It is a method reminiscent of the Dutch urban planner John Habraken who, half a century ago, theorised about a separation between building structure (cast from above) and housing units (imagined from below). But today, in the age of ChatGPT, we can go further and experiment with new grammars, open to all;

It will take time before the Celestial Sail project can offer concrete answers. The Ia alone certainly does not have thaumaturgic powers but, together with traditional participatory tools, it can contribute to a bottom-up process that has been going on in Scampia for years. An open, porous approach to design, as we have written together with the sociologist Richard Sennett, can then allow us to shed new light on old questions. How can buildings evolve together with the people who inhabit them? Can digital networks help us rethink participatory design? Can Ia technology be a tool for listening, for social imagination instead of imposition?

And, finally, to what extent is Winston Churchill's famous statement still valid: 'We shape our buildings; then they shape us'?

 Architect and engineer, and professor at MIT and the Milan Polytechnic, Carlo Ratti is curator of the 19th. International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale: "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective" (10 May-23 November 2025). In-depth materials on the Celestial Sails project can be accessed at: https://www.velaceleste.com/.