Daniele Porretta is an architect (La Sapienza, Rome), PhD in Theory and History of Architecture (UPC-ETSAB, Barcelona) and professor in the Degree of Design at Elisava, Faculty of Design and Engineering of Barcelona. His areas of research include the relationship of the city with cinema and literature, in particular the construction of the image of the city of the future in popular culture, from the technological utopias of the late nineteenth century to the dystopias of social control of the twentieth century. 

He has been a member of the ETSAB research group Critical Archive of the Barcelona Model. She is a member of the Histopia team, CSIC (Institute of History), the driving force behind the Transatlantic Network for the Study of Utopias, which has carried out the research project “Transatlantic Utopias: alternative imaginaries between Spain and America, 19th-20th centuries (UtopiAtlantica)”. 

He has directed numerous film and lecture series at institutions such as the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, the Caixaforum and the Italian Institute of Culture in Barcelona. He is a regular collaborator of the Institut d'Humanitats de Barcelona, where he has been director of the courses The city and the imaginary of destruction (2011), House(s). Looks on the idea of inhabiting (2015), The city of the future: utopias and dystopias (2016), Possible futures. Utopias and dystopias for the 21st century (2017), Mars: the other Earth (2019), Aliens. Encounters in literature, film and popular culture (2024). 

In 2020 he has published with Luiss University Press the book L'altra Terra. L'utopia di Marte dall'età victoriana alla New Space economy, dedicated to the history of utopia on the planet Mars. In 2022 the book was published in Spain by Siruela.