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Ma Yansong
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When I started university, I didn't know much about architecture, so I flipped through a lot of magazines, looking at different and exciting images from all over the world. I thought that architecture could be interesting.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Know
#Looking
#Over
#World
Although we're architects, we believe we do culture; architecture is culture, and the topics we tackle will always arise a broader debate.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Believe
#Culture
#Debate
A shan-shui city is a modern city, a high-density urban situation, but we pay more attention to the environment. We bring waterfalls; we bring in a lot of trees and gardens. We treat architecture as a landscape.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#City
#Situation
#Treat
The beauty of architecture is it involves work that stretches over a very long time but often starts in one instant, with just one emotion, a kind of instinctual response.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Beauty
#Long
#Time
#Work
The difficulty with big cities does not lie in skyscrapers or high-rises per se; rather, it is the values concealed within those buildings which lead to the loss of our humanity and our sense of spiritual emptiness.
- Ma Yansong
#Humanity
#Lie
#Loss
#Spiritual
#Values
In China, we had some buildings that looked like the White House or wine bottles. All they seemed to represent was bad taste.
- Ma Yansong
#Bad
#Buildings
#House
#Taste
#White
Chaoyang Park Plaza is about how to carry the traditional culture into a new format in modern architecture. Instead of building a boundary between the city and the park, I tried to design this building to emerge from the natural landscape.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#City
#Culture
#Design
#New
Architecture is a special kind of career that showcases the accumulations of culture, time, and history.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Culture
#History
#Time
The architecture scene in China is the most open and free climate compared to many other places. You can find many opportunities.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Climate
#Find
#Free
#Open
Oscar Niemeyer really inspired me. He's from South America, where nature has meaning. And his architecture was not expensive or high tech but artistic and spiritual. I like that.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#He
#Me
#Nature
#Spiritual
When I was young and used to look at Chinese architecture, there was no clear definition between what was landscaping and what was architecture.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Clear
#Look
#Used
#Young
I think architecture should be a stage, not something too material - more of an environment, not a product.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#More
#Product
#Stage
#Too
The way we do our architecture is to show that we can come up with our own solutions. We don't just take orders.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Own
#Take
#Up
#Way
Since the Beijing Olympics in 2008, our office has been discussing how we can make architecture more human and at one with nature. We need to ask ourselves, what legacy do we want to leave behind on humankind's urban culture?
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Culture
#Legacy
#Nature
A pool at the edge of the ocean is the simplest geometry, yet you feel connected to the sea. In a forest with the mountains in the background, you also feel the connection to nature, yet it's a very complex geometry. I think architecture is about controlling these feelings.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Connection
#Nature
#Sea
I'm trying to create architecture as landscape. But I'm not copying nature.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Create
#Nature
#Trying
Early in my career, I tried to bring an artistic feeling to architecture. That's really the intent and impression of what I think about: context, space, shapes, and landscape.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Early
#Feeling
#Space
Ultimately, the artistic part of architecture has always interested me.
- Ma Yansong
#Always
#Architecture
#Interested
#Me
In China, it's very easy to make architecture special because anything you design will look different, as most parts of the city are very similar. They make so many massive residential buildings.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#City
#Design
#Easy
#Look
The shan-shui city idea is trying to bring traditional values and ways of living to modern high-rise architecture.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#City
#Trying
#Values
#Ways
In the past, young, talented architects worked together to form a strong social agenda and communicate with a larger audience. That's what today's architecture community should be.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Community
#Today
#Together
When I graduated from high school, I thought I wanted to make science fiction movies, so I applied to film school, but I couldn't get in. A professor told me I should try architecture instead.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Film
#Me
#Movies
#Science
What if we treat the high-rise like a mountain, or we have gardens in the sky, or waterfalls? I think that's the most challenging thing I want to try in my architecture.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Sky
#Treat
#Try
#Want
We need to enter a new era to make nature and humans more emotionally connected in modern cities.
- Ma Yansong
#More
#Nature
#Need
#New Era
#New
I have never been to Mars. What will we discover when we get there? A red landscape, quiet horizon, frozen glaciers? Probably all is as beautiful, in its own way, as the Earth was thousands of years ago.
- Ma Yansong
#Beautiful
#Earth
#Horizon
#Red
#Way
Modern buildings have become memorials to power and capital. More and more, they're isolated from people.
- Ma Yansong
#Become
#Buildings
#More
#People
#Power
We try to turn buildings into landscapes - defying the idea of modernism which sees nature and buildings as two distinct elements.
- Ma Yansong
#Buildings
#Landscapes
#Nature
#Try
#Two
The way a human can coexist with nature has to be at the spiritual level.
- Ma Yansong
#Human
#Level
#Nature
#Spiritual
#Way
We need to be brave and tell the politicians what a better future could be.
- Ma Yansong
#Better
#Brave
#Future
#Need
#Politicians
The world itself is already a great textbook.
- Ma Yansong
#Great
#Itself
#Textbook
#World
Since the Industrial Revolution, we tend to use technology to show our power: you know, we build high-rises, towers, big buildings that become symbols of power and capitalism. We don't talk about how emotions and nature can be connected.
- Ma Yansong
#Big
#Capitalism
#Emotions
#Nature
#Power
#Technology
Traditionally, in the Eastern World, man and nature are close: men find happiness and prosperity in the beauty of nature, even if the nature is actually built to match this very need.
- Ma Yansong
#Beauty
#Happiness
#Man
#Men
#Nature
I grew up in Beijing, and there weren't many modern buildings during my childhood. I was influenced by traditional culture - the courtyards, the hutongs, the old city, and all the art forms - so, very naturally, I brought this to my practice.
- Ma Yansong
#Art
#Childhood
#City
#Culture
#Practice
There must be a way to combine the high rise and high-density environment with nature. Maybe we can have our gardens in the sky.
- Ma Yansong
#Environment
#Nature
#Rise
#Sky
#Way
'Shan shui' you can literally translate as 'mountain and water.' In traditional Chinese culture, there are a lot of paintings about shan shui, but now we're talking about a shan-shui city.
- Ma Yansong
#City
#Culture
#Now
#Talking
#Water
I don't use tools to create things, but I use them to realize things.
- Ma Yansong
#Create
#Realize
#Things
#Tools
#Use
In a traditional Japanese or Chinese garden, it's not only about the building or temple but about the whole setup - the structure, the landscape, the light, the plants, the water. The whole experience that makes your life there so beautiful.
- Ma Yansong
#Beautiful
#Experience
#Life
#Water
Architecture is about experience: not only visual but also what you can touch, what you can feel.
- Ma Yansong
#Architecture
#Experience
#Feel
#Touch
#Visual
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