Carlo Ratti's summer of everyday Italian objects

All summer, architect Carlo Ratti wrote a weekly column for Wallpaper* about ordinary Italian objects and what they reveal about design and daily life. There were fourteen in all, from the mosquito coil and the tiny Microlino car to the pedalo, the Campari Soda bottle, the lifeguard's uniform, the garden gnome, the Autogrill motorway bridge and the Mutti tomato tin. This final piece gathers the whole series and says goodbye.

Ratti's closing thoughts are about why architects should write at all. A friend's message, asking what he was trying to achieve, set him thinking, and he offers five answers. There's the French tradition of the engaged intellectual, whose ideas should reach beyond professional circles. There's Umberto Eco, whom he worked with as a student, and the idea that thinking evolves through open conversation. Ideas in public, he says, can gather allies and even help save buildings. He admits to a little vanity too, and to the good it does in making you work out who you are.

His last answer comes from a great-aunt, a poet in Paris, who said that in the end a life comes down to a bit of conversation. He found that the objects kept living in the comments, as readers argued with them. It's a warm way to close the season.

Our summary of a story from Wallpaper*, published 27 September 2026. Read the original

Photos: Wallpaper* · See all 2