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MAD Works

MAD Architects

Ma Yansong



5 Contents

Foreword by Peter Cook, 7

MAD Works by Ma Yansong, 9

Conversation with Aric Chen, 11

1. Fish Tank

Absolute Towers, 20

Harbin Opera House, 30

East 34th, 42

Urban Forest, 48

2. Ink Ice

Chaoyang Park Plaza, 54

China Wood Sculpture Museum, 64

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, 72

Clover House, 78

n Tower, 84

Taichung Convention Center, 90

3. Feelings are Facts

Ordos Museum, 98

Hongluo Clubhouse, 110

Fake Hills, 116

Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort, 124

Sanya Phoenix Island, 130

Pingtan Art Museum, 136

4. Shanshui City

Huangshan Mountain Village, 144

Nanjing Himalayas Center, 152

Xinhe HQ, 158

Quanzhou Convention Center, 164

8600 Wilshire, 170

Unic, 176

71 Via Boncompagni, 182

5. Beijing 2050

Hutong Bubble, 190

Beijing Conrad Hotel, 198

China Philharmonic Hall, 206

National Art Museum of China, 212

Qianmen East, 220

MAD Architects, 227

Exhibitions, 228

Lectures, 229

Awards & Recognitions, 230

Books & Publications, 231

Project Credits, 232

Index, 234

Partner Biographies, 238

Picture Credits, 239



7 Foreword

Foreword by Sir Peter Cook

Whatever happened to the avant-garde? It was a very useful

term 100, 70 or maybe 40 years ago for it covered the notions of

newness, wit, inspiration, originality – or at least work that was

in the direct slipstream of the highly original. It also played, from

time to time, with shock and bravado. Yet now we are hesitant to

reinvent the term: are we thus feebly eschewing the value of the

new, the witty, the original, the daring?

If only we can concoct this new word we surely then have an

appropriate tag for Ma Yansong who can be all these things. Like

many of the former avant-garde figures he slipped into the scene

just at the right moment and from the right place. From Bejing as

it was emerging out of a long period of mystery and paranoia and

then found blinking at the crossroads of Yale in the start of the

twenty-first century where Zaha Hadid was given the stage against

a backdrop of an extraordinary variety of contradictory talents.

This, rather than a dense positional platform, would enable the

talented young guy from China to discriminate, choose, enthuse,

become a courtier to the wonderful Queen of form and surface –

and then himself explode.

Smaller incursions into building were dwarfed by winning the

competition for Absolute Towers: demonstrating such fluency

with architecture of the rippling body that – of all places – polite

old Canada can never look back. To what extent their gestation

parallels the investigation of tower structures with parametric roll-

over in the Hadid office may interest those with a chicken-and-egg

view of architecture. More significantly, Yansong had undoubtedly

been one of the most fearless people in her London office (a

hothouse for such fluency) in the period before.

Yet it is the Harbin Opera House that causes us to sit up and

salivate. Even Hadid’s Alyev Center in Baku, with which it may be

compared, holds back the total breathless moment until we reach

the interior, whereas Yansong’s gentle mountain is somehow total

in the elegance of its rises and falls. Much has been written about

its mountainous characteristics, and about his empathy with the

locale. For me, its exhilaration is simply the product of a far more

inventive and fearless motivation than being merely responsive or

quotational. It suggests that Yansong, though he is encouraged

to make such statements as, ‘the world itself is already a great

textbook,’ or to invoke an interpretation of ‘Shanshui Spirit’ … to

stay out of nature but then return to nature … with an emotional

response to the surrounding world … is responding verbally to the

current pressure upon architects to justify and codify.

He has surely reached a position of enviable fluency and brilliance

that can be regarded in its own right?

And it is the Ordos Museum that continues this fascination. It is

as if the establishment of scale or any specificity of any part of its

surface is deliberately deflected. If the Opera House is a subtly

evolving crescendo, this strange hive keeps you guessing right until

you enter, but then usefully breaks down into functioning parts.

This architect is the bringer of the new fluency: clearly they emerge

out of a very real sense of structure, weight, substance and,

above all, form but they seem to have no fear of the hiccups that

European or American architecture often gets strangled by – which

then have to be resolved, or ‘played’ by niceties of articulation

or grammar. At this point it remains for one to pick out from his

architecture some intriguing characteristics. Of materiality: that one

senses the inherited palette of glazed openings and universal white

surfaces may be starting to bore him? That he is still happier with

some degree of axial formality that in the West, we associate with

pomp, but that he has the spirit to scramble all of it at any minute

and make an apparently random plan arrangement.

The old avant-garde figures often went out so far that in their

mature work they either lost their public or had seduced them

so far that they forgot there had ever been any other type of

proposition or aesthetics. It is interesting that Ma Yansong is a

frequent lecture visitor to the West, but what does he need from

us? The incentive, with this work is reversed, for he has surely

bewitched us.



9 MAD Works

MAD Works by Ma Yansong

People often ask what MAD stands for; sometimes, I explain it

stands for MA Design, but I like MAD (adjective) Architects better.

It sounds like a group of architects with an attitude towards

design and practice.

I think it is important to practise architecture with an attitude,

to be critical and sensitive to the issues and challenges in our

world. Unlike professional technicians and service providers,

who usually say ‘yes’, architects should raise the intellectual

issues and occasionally say ‘no’; they should never be satisfied

and always dream of the future. Architects not only represent

social and cultural values, they are ultimately the pioneers of

these values.

Nevertheless, attitude is a very personal noun as it is associated

with one’s body and spirit – it goes beyond architecture. Everyone

has something to say in society today, but not all have the power,

as architects do, to construct something of relative permanence.

Buildings serve and subtly influence our daily lives, they also

define how humans live and think. Architecture can be inspiring, but

only if it carries the ideas and emotions of the creators. It is a form

of art.

Like many other young architects, before having the opportunity

to build anything real, I designed small-scale objects. What

may have initially seemed to be a developmental stage of a

young firm continues to provide conceptual material for new

projects, as demonstrated throughout this book. One such

early work, entitled Fish Tank, I treated as architecture for fish

as well as a metaphorical challenge to modern architecture.

Ink Ice was an installation for a calligraphy exhibition; left

outdoors and untouched, the 27-ton (29 tonne) cube melted in

three days, until it eventually disappeared. This transformation

revealed a variety of dynamic shapes sculpted only by natural

forces. For Feelings Are Facts, the artist Olafur Eliasson and

I collaborated on a spatial installation in which we created

an environment that challenged humans’ experience and

perceptions of reality.

Of course, I ultimately imagined something bigger. For Beijing

2050, a self-commissioned project, I envisioned a floating city

and furthermore, transformed Tiananmen Square into a forest.

The concept of ‘Shanshui City’ was initiated in an art exhibition;

a dream of a future urban environment that reconnected nature

and humans spiritually.

These highly conceptual projects will most likely remain on

paper or seen inside exhibition halls; however, I use their

methodological themes as a means to discover my thinking and

categorize my works. As a point of origin for all my work, these

art pieces reveal my attitude toward architecture.

In this monograph, all the projects are organized and categorized

according to the aforementioned art pieces and their subsequent

relevant ideas in architecture. It is important for readers to

understand MAD Works from these conceptual perspectives.

MAD is an attitude that works.


10 MAD Architects

Fig. 2. Shanshui City Exhibition

Fig. 3. Rebuild World Trade Center

Fig. 4. Huangdu Art Centre Fig. 1. Beijing 2050: Hutong Bubbles


Fig. 6. Beijing 2050: Tiananmen Square


Fig. 8. Melting Mies

Fig. 9. Superstar: A Mobile Chinatown

Fig. 10. 800 m Tower


11 Conversation with Aric Chen

humans, and human emotions, as part of nature. It’s not like

the modern concept of nature, where you have architecture,

which is very machine-like, and then you put trees and greenery

inside it. Instead, [the architecture has] a curve, and you think

it’s a mountain. Something else might seem like water. It could

be anything in nature; it’s not an exact re-creation or copy. It’s

imaginary. So for the World Trade Center, although I proposed

putting green and water on top of this cloud, even without them,

the architecture itself becomes about nature to me.

After I realized this, I started to look back. When I was a kid,

I studied ink painting, and then in college, a lot of my projects

had to do with nature. And then Shanshui came into it when

I read an article by [the Chinese scientist] Qian Xuesen.

He talked about Shanshui, though in terms of big, high-rise

modern buildings with trees and green and all of these natural

elements combined. But he wasn’t an architect and didn’t say

what Shanshui architecture would look like. And so three or

four years ago, I started trying to define Shanshui architecture

for myself.

AC: Let’s talk about Qian Xuesen a little more. He was a scientist

who co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech in

the 1940s before being suspected of communist sympathies

under the Red Scare. He returned to China to found its rocket

programme, and it was only later in life, in the 1980s, that he

started talking about Shanshui. Is that correct?

MY: Yes.

AC: From what I understand, he was trying to reconcile Chinese

philosophical concepts with, for lack of a better term, Western

scientific rationalism. Maybe this is the age-old, perpetual

problem of ‘modern China’: this constant struggle to reconcile

‘Chineseness’ with ‘modernity’. I find it problematic that the

two are framed as opposites.

MY: Qian was a modern scientist, but he also liked traditional

gardens. He was very much into art and culture; his wife was a

musician. This was at the early stages of China’s urbanization

and, having come back from the US, maybe he expected to

find beautiful gardens and old cities, but instead he was seeing

modern architecture and urban planning. He was suggesting

a new way, and thought we could learn from traditional cities

and gardens. But he didn’t know how.

I visited [the architecture critic] Gu Mengchao, who frequently

corresponded with Qian when he was the chief editor of

Architecture Journey [Jianzhu Xuebao] magazine. Gu showed

me these letters, which he also published. To me, everything

Qian was talking about was very general. He was talking about

Conversation with Aric Chen

Aric Chen: When we first met nearly ten years ago – I think it

was 2007, at your studio – you’d only recently won the competition

to design the first Absolute Tower outside Toronto, which is

arguably the commission that made you famous. You’d presented

some important and critically engaged proposals like Beijing 2050

( Fig. 1), but you were still at the very early stages of your career.

I think many people had a hard time seeing beyond the purely

formal aspects of your work.

Now, when your name comes up, the first thing that comes

to mind is this new direction you’ve been taking with ‘Shanshui’

[literally ‘mountain-water’, a term borrowed from traditional

Chinese landscape painting that reflects on the relationship

between humans and nature]. Where did this come from,

and what do you mean by it?

Ma Yansong: I started to use ‘Shanshui’ maybe three or four

years ago. Early on, I didn’t have an agenda or direction; I

just tried to get a sense of a place and follow my first, instant

reaction to it. But after I had more projects to reflect on, I started

to look at them all together. I tried to understand why I did this

or that ( Fig. 2). And the one project I tried to understand most

was for the World Trade Center [a 2001 proposal for a massive,

cloud-shaped structure hovering above the site] in New York.

That was actually my thesis project in school. I had a lot of

discussions about this with the artist and critic Bao Pao, whom

I consider my tutor.

He’d often come to the studio. This was eight or nine years ago,

and he said, ‘I’m interested in you because of this one project.

It’s very emotional, and looks nothing like modern architecture.’

We talked a lot about how my proposal wasn’t about specific or

momentary issues, or memorializing September 11. As a student,

I had been stuck and didn’t know which way to focus. I couldn’t

put anything in this void [where the Twin Towers had stood]. Then

one day, I had a dream about something floating above the site.

I sketched it, and that became my proposal ( Fig. 3). Bao Pao

thought that this was very valuable for our era, which can be seen

as the end of Modernism. It wasn’t about a certain logic or rule,

but was instead about personal feeling, hope, and something very

human. He always encouraged me to look back to this, and why

I did it this way.

AC: So this was the beginning of your self-realization as an

architect who works in an expressive mode?

MY: Yes. I find that the beauty of Shanshui is in the emotional

expression. It’s not about the duplication or insertion of natural

elements. It takes a broader definition of nature that sees


12 MAD Architects

methodology, data and science, like he was thinking about

national policy. For me, there’s no way to define Shanshui so

that it applies to everyone. I think that’s a totally Modernist way

of thinking: You find the methodology, and everyone can use it.

Instead, I think Shanshui is very personal. So there’s a difference,

but I decided to use the same term because I think we share the

same concerns.

It’s like the old city of Beijing. I think it’s beautiful: the Drum

Tower, the Bell Tower, the lakes, bridges, mountains. Not only

is it green, the layout is quite well planned. It’s very functional,

but at the same time, it’s very poetic. There is a philosophy

behind it. That’s something that’s lacking in modern cities.

Modern cities are all about traffic, function, and so on. But that

focuses too much on daily life and not on the quality or soul of

the city. I think there should be a philosophy, a very high level

of thinking, behind it (Fig. 4).

AC: However, I wonder if one of the biggest points of friction

that comes up when people talk about your work, or even when

you talk about your work, is this reliance on binaries – between

emotion, personal expression and experiential qualities on the

one hand, and function, planning and other more practical and

technical concerns on the other. Are the two necessarily at odds?

Does one have to come at the expense of the other? Or maybe

what this comes down to is that you’re defining the ‘Chinese’

idea of nature as being different than the ‘Western’ conception

of nature.

MY: When we talk about nature, it’s already an emotional

concern. People are talking about nature now because they think

we need better environments where not everything is controlled

by machines. They need a release. That’s already quite a spiritual,

emotional need. But when this translates into architecture in

the professional realm, people are still following the modern

methodology or way of thinking that assumes humans can

control everything. So when they think about how we create

a better environment, the answer is just to add greenery, or

improve the air inside or draw less heat from outside. They think

better technology can change everything. Most professionals

talk too much about this, and then they forget what it was

that people originally wanted; it was purely an emotional

requirement at the beginning.

AC: That’s interesting because, in many ways, Chinese

representations of nature, as with classical gardens or landscape

paintings, have always been about a kind of highly stylized,

extreme nature – an artificial nature. This artificial nature then

becomes more natural than nature itself. It’s very visceral, but it’s

also culturally specific. When people in the West think of nature,

they maybe think of rolling hills and forests or something that looks

more like English gardens – which are, funnily enough, highly

constructed to not look constructed ( Fig. 5).

In any case, I’m wondering how well your idea of Shanshui

translates abroad. Like when you meet with, say, developers

and clients in the USA or Europe, do you talk about Shanshui

and, if so, what’s the reaction?

MY: I use it more for myself. But I do sometimes try to use

this Shanshui term, which nobody understands, because if you

say ‘nature’, people already have a preconception that might

be misleading. So I don’t want to mention ‘nature’. If anything,

when I have an opportunity to explain, I might even say that

I’m not talking about nature. I need a more abstract word that

gives me time to define things little by little, to find a language

people can understand.

AC: There’s an emotive, but also a critical, aspect to your work.

Going back to your World Trade Center scheme, it started out

as an intuitive gesture, but it also became a critique of our

obsession with tall buildings as symbols of power, hubris, and so

on. And then there was your Beijing 2050 proposal, which you

presented at the Venice Biennale in 2006. Among other things,

it included the provocative and politically loaded idea of turning

Tiananmen Square into a park. There’s been a continuous thread

of criticism built into your work.

MY: Yes, I think my practice always starts from criticizing.

And that’s how I understand, and learn from, our environment

and current issues. And then I try to respond to those issues.

People need to feel better, to understand their relationship

with this world. So somehow, they use nature to express

their own values sometimes. They go to the ocean. They think

it’s beautiful. Or they go to the forest or look at one flower

or one rock on the ground, and they automatically feel a

response to it. But it’s not about the rock or the flower. It’s

about themselves.

So I think that gives nature a social role because when nature

becomes symbolic or a symbol of human emotions, human

spirit, and human life and values, it makes everyone the same.

You don’t have to be powerful or rich; nature becomes a social

device that makes people more equal.

That was the idea, I think, with the Tiananmen Square proposal

(Fig. 6). That square is very symbolic. If we can change it into

a forest, it becomes a place that connects more deeply to

individuals. I feel that nature or Shanshui somehow has a social

agenda. We’re interested in how we can transform the industrial

or modern city into a more human oriented city, and in how

nature can create multiple meanings in this new society. It’s not



only about more trees and beauty. It’s about challenging the

basic values of the modern era.

AC: With Shanshui, you say it’s not just about the appearance

– that it’s a social project. But in your case, the social benefit is

very much tied to the appearance and the form. To many people,

form and substance are not the same, and are even at odds. But

I think you’re saying that, for you, the form is the substance.

MY: You know, before I adopted the Shanshui concept, I had

my own preferences for form and language. Some people talked

about the curves I used as being just sculptural shapes. But I

always argued that my curves are different, at least for me. I try

to make them somehow strange. I don’t want a very polished

geometry. It’s more like traditional Chinese paintings and

gardens; you know, sometimes they’re actually a bit ugly, but

the ugliness is part of it ( Fig. 7).

AC: There’s beauty in the grotesque.

MY: Right. That makes it more alive to me. But after I started

talking about Shanshui, some people started to think of it in

terms of a certain style, or a certain shape, like mountains.

AC: Which is understandable, given you’ve designed and built

quite a few mountain-shaped buildings. You even named one of

them Fake Hills.

MY: Sure. I think creating mountains in a modern city can be

very nice. But I started to worry because that wasn’t my only

intention. When I talk about a space, or the emotion of a space,

it’s not just visual. In fact, if you can convey a feeling with

objects by using other means, that can be quite good. That’s

why, recently, I started to think more about the experience; I’ve

tried not to rely on shapes, or just natural elements.

With some projects, I’ve tried to see if we can create something

spiritual at a large scale. With the Chaoyang Park project [a

complex of mountain-like towers in Beijing], I think the layout,

the composition, is more important to me at the lower and

ground levels. But while the two towers create a very strong

silhouette, it’s more about the context, the statement I want to

make. I want it to look strong and stand out because I know

there is another ‘skyline’ not far away, with the CCTV tower and

the China World Trade Center nearby. On the one hand, I think

Chaoyang Park’s curves work well because of the park next to

it. But also, I want it to stand out so people will be curious about

why we’re doing it this way.

Maybe in the future, it won’t be necessary to do this.

AC: Speaking of Chaoyang Park, you’ve told me that that

beautiful, smoky glass you’re using to clad it is an intentional

reference to Mies and the tinted, bronzed glass he was

known for.

MY: You mean the black glass?

AC: Yes. By applying it to the building’s curvaceous forms,

you said you were melting Modernism, deforming Modernism.

I’m glad you said that because it helps clarify a critical

dimension of your work for me. But I’m also wondering if,

instead of deforming Mies and Modernism, maybe you’re

modernizing nature.

MY: The fish tank that I designed in 2004 was like that. I also did

an art installation called Ink Ice [2006]. I made black ice blocks

and then melted them in a distorted way, with holes that took

a very organic shape, formed by sun, wind, natural forces. And

when I did the first rendering of the Chaoyang Park towers, I was

thinking about sliding rocks or sculptural mountain lines, like a

split rock. From the side, I wanted you to see different lines and

freer shapes.

A long time ago, I did a house proposal called Melting Mies.

It’s a single-storey white building where the structure starts to

change and the space becomes more organic. Actually, I like

Mies. In my MAD Dinner book, I did a conversation with him.

I asked him questions, but there were no answers. I’d ask another

question. Still no answer. Maybe he doesn’t need to answer

( Fig. 8).

There’s a scholar I know who did a lot of research on Mies.

He lived in a Mies building and said that every day he stepped

outside the building, he felt so dirty. He didn’t want to walk

outside. But he thought the space inside was so spiritual and

clean. He didn’t want to leave that reality for another. I find that

so interesting.

Actually, I think that Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute – that’s my

favourite work – is almost like Shanshui.

AC: Because of the relationships between the buildings

and landscape?

MY: Yes, between the water and the sky and the ocean and

the people themselves and this space. It’s funny, people

categorize Kahn within modern architecture because his work

is so clean-lined and geometric, but there are other ways of

looking at him.


14 MAD Architects

AC: This makes me think of the Bauhaus, and how our

understanding of the Bauhaus is so much more complex than

before. We used to associate it almost purely with functionalism,

the unity of art and industry, and so on. But now, we know the

Bauhaus was much less singular and more nuanced than that.

For example, there was this whole spiritual side, especially at the

beginning, that was almost New Agey. There were any number

of competing factions and ideological battles. And recently,

this opening up of our conception of the Bauhaus, and perhaps

even Modernism more generally, came to a head for me when

the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation awarded two very different

proposals first prize in its design competition for its new building.

MY: Right, it was a bit unexpected.

AC: It was almost schizophrenic. You had one scheme [by

Gonzalez Hinz Zabala] that was essentially a sober Miesian box,

but then another [by Young and Ayata] that was the complete

opposite: an unruly cluster of iridescent pods that evoked the

Bauhaus as a more colourful and diverse cacophony of voices.

It’s like even the Bauhaus is still struggling to define the Bauhaus,

and in the process they’ve gone to two extremes to drive home

the point. But if we can represent the Bauhaus as a crazy cluster

of iridescent pods – if we open ourselves to looser, unorthodox

and even counterintuitive interpretations – then maybe we can

also think of Louis Kahn as Shanshui because, despite the clear

formal differences, many of his interests do seem to align, or at

least overlap, with yours.

MY: He was a Modernist, but he was also Classical. His

inspiration came from the past. His Salk Institute layout was

mostly symmetrical, which you can consider Classical.

However, traditionally, there would have been a monument,

building, or other object at the focal point, whereas at the Salk

Institute, the focus becomes empty. The axis leads to the

ocean and nature beyond.

AC: It’s fascinating to hear you bring a more Chinese reading

to these archetypal projects by Western architects. It resonates

with a lot of what we’re working on at M+: revisiting and re-

evaluating global narratives from our perspective in Asia.

When it comes to you, though, as the most internationally

successful Chinese architect of your generation, I’m wondering

how conscious you are about your ‘Chineseness’ and the role

that plays in your work and how you present yourself to the

wider world. In this vein, an obvious, earlier project to bring up is

Superstar: A Mobile Chinatown, which you presented at the 2008

Venice Biennale.

MY: That was a different side of me.

AC: It was a striking scheme: a city-sized, star-shaped Chinatown

that could be transplanted anywhere in the world. Maybe explain

a bit what you tried to do with that.

MY: I know some people are still talking about it. And some

developers even tried to push me to realize one of those.

AC: Really?

MY: Yes. But for me, it was only a proposal, which I made for

the Biennale. Because in China, we were focused at the time

on iconic buildings for the Beijing Olympics. I thought about

making something for which I didn’t have to think about the

structure or practical things, and could just make something

iconic – an image. For Venice, I was among an international

group of architects. And I was thinking that they had asked

me, one Chinese, to participate and I was wondering why I

was there. So there were some identity questions that came

up for me. I also wondered why I made this thing shaped like a

star ( Fig. 9). That’s when I called it a Chinatown. The Superstar is

Chinatown because, like Chinatowns, it actually looks nothing like

China.

In Chinatowns, you look at the restaurants and all the traditional

things, and they’re fake. But so are many iconic things, and

maybe this is the true China. After I named it Chinatown, people

began relating it to China throughout the world. It’s so powerful.

It’s so stupid. But at the same time, this thing can move and

there are sports facilities in there, so you don’t have to rebuild

the Olympics every four years in a different place. And it’s all

solar powered, self-sufficient and self-contained; it doesn’t

produce any waste. I remember one article saying that, finally,

Chinese architects are starting to talk about sustainability.

AC: I liked the ambiguity of that project because it put forth a

vision that was both exhilarating and terrifying. Especially in

2008, everyone was so entranced by the idea of China as being

the future, but just as now, there was also a lot of nervousness

about China, a sense of menace.

MY: Even Herzog & de Meuron was criticized in Europe for

designing this monster building [the ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium] for

China. But Superstar was just to trigger discussion. I was

just making fun.

AC: Maybe this brings us to the topic of iconic architecture.

People always talk about Chinese architecture, historically,



as being more about the relationships between buildings and

spaces than the buildings as objects themselves. And yet, in

recent years, China has become an architectural playground

of ‘object buildings,’ including yours. It has fully embraced the

iconic building as an image to be instrumentalized by political

or market forces, or both. You’ve said that you’re against the

idea of architecture as a product, but of course your architecture,

as well that of many others, has become just that.

MY: I think it’s very easy to become iconic in a very generic world.

AC: Right, OK.

MY: I mean, iconic architecture includes many different things.

It includes remarkable architecture, historical architecture, and

also ugly buildings, because they’re still special. I think calling

something iconic is not enough. ‘Iconic’, for me, has to be

seen in relationship to our urban landscape, in which people

nowadays don’t have a lot of expectations of most buildings,

which are mostly functional, normal. The city becomes so

boring, so we need something to express ourselves, whether

it’s beautiful or ugly. We need to have this opportunity, whether

the result is good or not.

So that’s just the phenomenon. It’s natural. Anytime, anywhere,

there is this combination or tension between something special

and something normal. But some good iconic buildings come

out of this and they become proof that people are still trying

to do some meaningful, experimental work. I hope that’s the

case with me. I don’t want things to look the same. I mean, if

you try to challenge what’s out there, the result will look different.

And sometimes, I decide to make it more extreme because I

think it helps.

AC: True. In the best cases, iconic buildings not only spur

formal and technical innovation, but they can stir emotions,

provide experiences, and offer another layer of interest and

perhaps meaning to the urban environment. Clearly, iconic

buildings, however you define ‘iconic’, fill some sort of human

need, or else we wouldn’t still be building them.

MY: Yes. I think we really need iconic buildings. I mean,

sometimes, people get angry because they think this special

little thing or building is too stupid. But we need the iconic.

Even in old Beijing, the pavilions, the layout, the position of the

pagoda on an island, like in Beihai Park – they’re meant to be

special. They cannot be average. They’re special symbols in

Beijing. At the same time, they’re enjoyable, and people like

them. The city needs iconic buildings to express the true values

or true desires of the people.

AC: How about skyscrapers? As with your World Trade Center

scheme, early projects like your hypothetical 800 m Tower [which

was folded over in half] were a reaction against the fetishization

of tall buildings ( Fig. 10). But now, you’re building quite a few

high-rises. I remember, four years ago, seeing how determined

you were to build a skyscraper in Manhattan. Recently, you won

a competition to do just that.

MY: I’m not against the high-rise. I’m against the high-rise

becoming a monument. The old-fashioned way to make a

high-rise is to simply stack all the spaces and create a strong

image. The powerful and formalistic image – that’s something

I’m against. I think if we need density, it makes sense that

people have to live vertically. But you still have to design the

space for people; it shouldn’t just be like a big machine that

you go inside.

So in some of my high-rises, there’s no clear shape. I want

to express the idea of an organic village, detailed at a human

scale. So there are a lot of balconies, a garden here, a garden

there. For example, I’m working on a project in Nanjing

that’s not super tall, but it’s a high-rise. There are white sun-

shading louvres, and behind that, we have a lot of balconies

and gardens at every level. Inside, at every three levels, we

have a void. The elevator only stops at every three floors and

people walk up or down. So this void becomes a garden and

also a social space, a community space. This is the kind of

condition we aim for when thinking about how people can live

in vertical environments.

AC: You’ve talked before about how you think your work is

maturing, how you’re thinking more about the ways individuals

experience space at the ‘micro-scale’. With the Chaoyang Park

complex, for example, you’ve narrowed some of the outdoor

areas to make them feel more intimate.

MY: When I say micro-scale, I’m not really talking about

the scale or size of the space. Thinking about the Salk Institute,

I’ve been there, and I watched somebody cry in that space.

I don’t know why this person was crying, but they chose

to sit there, facing the ocean. I think that’s a really touching

space.

AC: How does all of this apply to your biggest project at the

moment, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago?

MY: I think some clients, they can feel the beauty of the image,

the beauty of your architecture, even if they cannot explain it.

They appreciate the logic of that. George Lucas is like this; he’s

a very special guy. I think he liked the very relaxed and romantic


16 MAD Architects

image of my scheme. At the same time, the building has a

strong layout based on very rational thinking. So Lucas thinks it

works well as a building, while also providing a new experience.

I remember the first time we met, before we started working on

the competition. He invited several firms to participate, and I was

curious about why he invited us. I asked him what he expected

from us. He said, ‘I don’t know what I expect. That’s why I invited

all of you guys because you’re all creative. Just go to the site

and see what’s best for the site and show me what you think.’

You know, he first planned to build his museum in San Francisco

with a totally different kind of [Neoclassical] architecture. I

realized he’s someone who first needs to see things, and then he

knows what he wants. I gave him my book and asked him which

projects he liked. He said, ‘I like this, I like this, I like this.’ He

liked a lot of our previous work.

I found that he liked very free, organic, even romantic architecture,

which described a lot of what we do. There were five architects

presenting their proposals to him over three days. After I finished,

he said, ‘I like this. I want it.’

AC: So he responded immediately to it.

MY: Immediately. So if I say that my design expresses my

emotions, he gets it. I don’t have to explain a lot.

AC: What about science fiction? Has that influenced your work

at all? We talked about Qian Xuesen. But this also makes me

think of Wang Dahong, the father of modern architecture in

Taiwan, who proposed a monument to America’s moon landings

and wrote a science fiction novel himself.

MY: The funny thing is, Lucas really liked our Ordos Museum

[completed in 2011 in the Chinese city of Ordos, Inner Mongolia].

That’s the reason he invited us. He saw the pictures somewhere.

I designed it to be like an object that landed in the desert – and

that was an inspiration from Star Wars. There is a scene in one

of the Star Wars films where a spaceship lands on the desert,

and you see the reflection of the sand on the metal body of the

vessel. I watched this many, many years ago and actually forgot

that it was Star Wars. I just remembered the image, which kept

coming back to my mind. Later on, I tried to find where it came

from, and it turned out to be Star Wars.

AC: I wonder: if we think about science as something that’s

supposed to be provable, there’s an inherent contradiction in the

idea of ‘science fiction’ in the same way that the ‘artificial nature’

that we see in so much of your work can sound rather oxymoronic.

Yet these terms resolve themselves; their built-in contradictions

describe something new and, in the end, quite graspable. Maybe

this is another reason your work resonated with Lucas. It’s rooted

in some kind of plausible reality, but it still takes you totally out of

that realm.

MY: Right, I wanted to make the Lucas Museum not an object,

but something that is completely part of the landscape, in an

organic but also futuristic way. I wanted it to merge with the

landscape and the green, where people can walk on this plaza,

which is merged with this building that’s like a mountain. And

then inside, the space and circulation are very linear and fluid,

and there’s a big dome with an oculus at the top, where there’s

a garden and observation deck. You can go on this observation

deck, and you’ll feel like you’re communicating with the sky.

It’s very surreal. I think this is a new kind of architecture, a new

experience. Maybe at some points, you think you’re not even

on earth any more; you think you’re on the moon.

AC: I think this is a fantastic way to conclude.

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18 Fish Tank

1.

Fish Tank

Unlike human living spaces, the fish’s world of water is relatively

free of gravity’s restrictions. Nevertheless, they are usually housed

in an unimaginative cubic structure, which is shaped by the way

humans experience life on land. The lack of surprise and ambiguity

in the fish tank could be said to echo the generic, repetitive spaces

of a typical modern city. And the inexpensive cost of a goldfish –

around 40p (60 US cents) – echoes the powerlessness of China’s

‘low value’ population. But unlike in cities, the architect encounters

relatively few barriers in an attempt to improve living conditions for

the common goldfish.

To re-imagine the fish tank cube, we tracked the movement

of fish. We deformed the cube according to the users’ swim

paths, employing stereo lithography modelling to transform

the external space by pushing the borders inward. We created

new connections within the volume, and a more interesting

underwater world evolved.

Fish Tank traced the behaviour of fish to understand how space

is defined based on individual feelings. Like fish, humans are

individuals with character and feelings, and should not be limited to

living within the generic geometric confines of a box. The following

projects challenge the stark mass-produced architecture that is

inundating cities. Instead, these projects reference nature and

break open the hermetically sealed boxes to dissolve thresholds;

they imagine the interior and exterior as interchangeable spaces.

The sinuous form of Absolute Towers (p. 20) challenges the

functionality commonly associated with the tower typology. Inspired

by the adjacent river, the fluid form of Harbin Opera House (p. 30)

carves out dynamic interior and exterior spaces for exploration.

The slender East 34th (p. 42) disregards the typical tiresome tower

and instead offers a subtle organic form, softening a city skyline

pierced by pointed and squared crowns. The sculptural tower,

Urban Forest (p. 48), elevates the urban lifestyle with high-density

nature through the articulation of irregularly shaped floor plates that

are emphasized by floating gardens.

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160509_MAD_interior_17–224.indd 20 10/05/2016 12:38 160509_MAD_interior_17–224.indd 21 10/05/2016 12:38

22

1. The Absolute Towers provide an iconic landmark

for Mississauga, Canada.

Fish Tank

1.

160509_MAD_interior_17–224.indd 22 10/05/2016 12:38

23 Absolute Towers

Absolute Towers

2006–2012

Mississauga

Canada

Type: Residential Condominium

Status: Completed

Tower A Building Area: 45,000 square metres (484,376 square feet)

Tower B Building Area: 40,000 square metres (430,556 square feet)

Le Corbusier’s famous twentieth-century statement, ‘A house is

a machine for living in’, exemplified Modernist principles. As we

leave the machine age behind and the scale of our cities continues

to exceed the archetype of a centralized urban organization, we

must consider the message architecture should convey and what

constitutes the ‘house’ of today.

Like other rapidly developing suburbs in North America,

Mississauga is looking for a new identity. Absolute Towers creates

a residential landmark among an emerging skyline of conventional

towers. The iconic project offers a new type of urban life that

moves beyond functional efficiency and instead thrives on density

and differentiation. The project prompts an emotional connection

between residents and their hometown.

In dialogue with each other and the surrounding nature, the two

towers appear as though they have been shaped by the sun and

wind. The rotating towers correspond with the surrounding scenery.

Deceptively simple in organization, this rotation derives from the

stacked oval floor plates around a central axis. Continuous balconies

surround each floor and eliminate the vertical barriers traditionally

used in high-rise architecture. Light plays across the reflective glazed

surface, responding to and amplifying changing diurnal conditions of

weather and activity. Shifting and bending in shape as one walks or

drives past, the towers appear to be at once sharp and soft, compact

and extended, skinny and fat, naturalistic and futuristic. With its

expressive, alluring form redolent of the human body, it suitably

inhabits its local moniker, ‘Marilyn Monroe towers’.


24 Fish Tank

2.


Absolute Towers25

2. The sinuous design has been dubbed the ‘Marilyn

Monroe towers’ by locals.

3. Continuous balconies wrap the facade, each

residential unit has an outdoor space and looks

to the sky.

3.


26 Fish Tank

4. The space between the towers is equally as dynamic

as the buildings themselves.

5. Absolute Towers’ seemingly complex forms are

rationally constructed with a central core, as revealed

in the section drawing.

4.


27 Absolute Towers

5.


28 Fish Tank

G, –10°

7th, –4°

13th, 9°

19th, 27°

25th, 45° 26th, 50° 27th, 58° 28th, 66° 29th, 74° 30th, 82°

20th, 30° 21st, 33° 22nd, 36° 23rd, 39° 24th, 42°

2nd, –9°

8th, –3°

3rd, –8°

9th, –2°

4th, –7°

10th, 0°

5th, –6°

11th, 3°

6th, –5°

12th, 6°

14th, 12° 15th, 15°

17th, 21°

18th, 24°

16th, 18°

6. The typical floor plan rotates around the central core

by varying degrees, which produces a unique floor

plan at each level.


29 Absolute Towers

37th, 138°

55th, 197° 56th, 198°

49th, 186° 50th, 189° 51st, 192° 52nd 194° 53rd, 195° 54th, 196°

38th, 146° 39th, 154° 40th, 159° 41st, 165°

31st, 90° 32nd, 98° 33rd, 106° 34th, 114° 36th, 130°35th, 122°

42nd, 165°

43rd, 168° 44th, 171° 45th, 174° 46th, 177° 47th, 180° 48th, 183°


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