The installation “Vela Celeste: Reimagining Home”, curated directly by CRA - Carlo Ratti Associati in collaboration with the City of Naples, is proposed as an experiment in urban regeneration and collective narrative, hybridising civic participation, artificial intelligence and architectural design. It was showcased at the last Venice Biennale, the one that Carlo Ratti himself has curated.

The Vela Celeste is the only survivor of the three Vele di Scampia, complex residential structures built in the 1970s as the avant-garde of modernist town planning and which later became a symbol of degradation and marginality. The project on display stems from the Neapolitan administration's decision to preserve this building — now uninhabited — not as a ruin, but as a civic infrastructure capable of accommodating new functions, memories and collective visions.
A gesture that is part of the broader redevelopment programme financed by the PNRR and Next Generation EU, aimed at restoring centrality and dignity to a historically neglected area.

The core of the curatorial project involved a select group of 15-20 former residents of the Vele, as well as local activists such as the Comitato Vele. For the installation, the participants developed a series of messages that were transformed into images using generative artificial intelligence models.These visualisations are not just an artistic exercise, but become part of an interactive digital archive accessible to the public, destined to be updated and enriched over time.

In the context of the Biennale, “Vela Celeste: Reimagining Home” presents itself as a reflection on contemporary living, the transformative possibilities of active listening and the role of emerging technologies in the construction of new forms of citizenship. Far from the imagery of ruin, the installation proposes a model of participatory architecture in which the home is not just a physical asset, but a space of relationships, memory and design.

As the mayor of Naples Gaetano Manfredi states, the Vela Celeste “is not just a symbol, nor a static memory of the past, but an archive of imagery capable of rethinking the city's future”. An idea also shared by Laura Lieto, deputy mayor and town planning councillor, who defines the intervention as a citizenship workshop, “a place where everyone can contribute to positive change”.

Opening image: “Vela Celeste: Reimagining Home”: images created with artificial intelligence and based on the aspirations of a selected group of Scampia residents. Courtesy CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati