Memory Builds the Future
FVTVRIST Magazine | In Dialogue with Rocco Plessi
May 7, 2025
Interview by Anna Somova //
Venetian architect and digital innovator Rocco Plessi, founder of Plessi Digital, approaches architecture as a profound exercise in memory, emotion, and invisible forces. The space becomes a medium for perception as much as construction.
In dialogue, what emerges is a practice grounded in intuition rather than spectacle; one that resists the flattening effects of digital standardization in favour of nuance, atmosphere, and affect. There is a clear belief that technology, when consciously engaged, does not replace human imagination — it sharpens it. It becomes an instrument not of efficiency, but of empathy.
Each project emerges as a spatial hypothesis — not merely a design, but a pre-material narrative shaped by memory, intuition, and the anticipation of presence. It is in this liminal state, before matter and function take hold, that architecture reveals its most vulnerable and poetic dimension: the possibility of being felt before being built.
Architecture begins with memory. Not with blueprints, nor with technical drawings, but with the emotional architectures that shape how spaces are perceived, inhabited, and remembered.
Before code, before render — there is the way one sees.
As the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 turns its attention to Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective., FVTVRIST enters into a conversation with a voice reminding us that even in an age of synthetic minds, architecture must begin — and end — with the intelligence of feeling.
PART I.
Personal Experience & Philosophical Roots//
Venice Architecture Biennale 2025
Architecture isn't just about structures — it's about emotional landscapes.
Every visualization we create is a memory of a place that doesn't exist yet.
The Biennale’s theme, Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective., seems tailor-made for the kind of questions your work raises. How do you personally interpret this idea of ‘collective intelligence’ in the context of architecture?
I see collective intelligence as a natural extension of architecture’s original mission: to create shared environments that nurture life. Today, technology allows us to design with millions of invisible collaborators, data, AI, ecological systems, without losing the human hand. True collective intelligence respects both intuition and information.
Do you feel the role of the architect is shifting - from individual visionary to something more networked, collaborative, even porous? What excites or unsettles you about that shift?
Absolutely. The "solo genius" myth is dissolving. Architects today are more like conductors of complex symphonies. This is exciting, it forces us to be more humble, more open, more attuned to the rhythms of a world that demands collaboration rather than control.
Every creator’s vision is shaped by their earliest interactions with the world. Could you share a defining moment or experience in your life that profoundly influenced your approach to architecture and your relationship with technology?
From an early age, I understood that architecture wasn't just about structures; it was about emotional landscapes. Growing up surrounded by art and creative experimentation taught me that intuition could coexist with innovation. Technology was never a replacement for imagination; it was a tool to deepen it.
You come from an environment deeply embedded in art and innovation. How does this background shape your thoughts about the intersection between art, existential philosophy, and your architectural/AI practice today?
I don't see architecture, art, or technology as separate. They are all extensions of the same existential search: to make meaning visible. My work today is less about replicating forms and more about revealing invisible forces, memory, desire, fragility, through digital and spatial mediums. AI is part of this evolution, but it’s the human instinct behind the machine that matters.
With Plessi Digital, you're deeply involved in visualizing abstract concepts and helping architects and designers manifest their visions. Can you explain, what deeper purpose or mission drives your work beyond providing technical solutions?
Plessi Digital was born to challenge the idea that digitalization means standardization. We create not to serve technology but to humanize it. The deeper mission is to craft digital architectures that feel alive, experiences that provoke memory, emotion, and a renewed connection to space.
How do work with architects and designers differ, and what creative tensions or, unexpected harmonies, do you encounter between the two worlds?
Architects think in systems; designers think in sensations. Both are vital. The tension often lies between structure and freedom, but that’s where the magic happens. Our role is to translate abstract visions into tangible experiences without suffocating their poetry.
PART II.
AI & The Metaverse //
Do you agree that AI isn’t a replacement for creativity, but a powerful collaborator? How do you see AI reshaping (not just how we design) but how we think as architects, artists, and humans?
AI is neither savior nor threat. It's a mirror. It reflects our own ambitions, fears, and dreams back at us. Used consciously, it can accelerate intuition, liberate creativity, and allow us to think spatially in ways never before possible. But it must always remain a collaborator, not a substitute for human vision.
With this shift, do new ethical questions emerge? What responsibilities do architects carry when they design not only for people, but increasingly with systems of intelligence that may one day shape human behavior?
Of course. When we design with AI, we are shaping the frameworks through which future lives will unfold. Responsibility becomes even greater. Architects can no longer think only in terms of functionality or aesthetics; we must also consider the behavioral, psychological, and social impact of the spaces and systems we create.
Do you see digital architectures as a new kind of phenomenology? What role do you think the architect plays when the built world becomes entirely conceptual?
In the metaverse, space is freed from physics, but not from emotion. Digital architectures become pure states of experience, less about material, more about memory, identity, and perception. It’s a new kind of phenomenology, one that challenges what 'real' even means.
Do these metaverse spaces change the way we experience time, emotion, or even identity?
They already have. In digital spaces, time collapses, emotions are intensified, and identities become fluid. As architects, we have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to design for these new dimensions of human experience, with sensitivity and imagination.
As we approach an era shaped by synthetic minds and shared perception, do you believe architecture can still hold space for the deeply personal, the poetic, the human?
It must. The deeper our technologies become, the more crucial it is to defend spaces for wonder, contemplation, and tenderness. Architecture will not lose its humanity unless we abandon it ourselves. At Plessi Digital, we believe the future belongs to those who can merge innovation with vulnerability, who can remember that the ultimate client is still the human soul.
FIN