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All Quotes by author - Ma Yansong

" A door handle is very symbolic to me. It is the first object that one will interact with before entering a new space. "

" A lot of ancient poetry sees in nature a reflection of human emotions, and in a post-industrialized era, once people have become more aware of the necessity of a more harmonious relation between man and nature, we need to build cities which can connect with human spiritual needs instead of being merely functional. "

" Although we're architects, we believe we do culture; architecture is culture, and the topics we tackle will always arise a broader debate. "

" 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. "

" Architects like to work in a problematic environment. "

" Architects think that beauty is a crime. "

" Architecture is about experience: not only visual but also what you can touch, what you can feel. "

" Architecture is a special kind of career that showcases the accumulations of culture, time, and history. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" China has some cities, traditional cities, with a long history. They are so beautiful, and they were planned so smartly. I call them gardens on the city scale. For example, Beijing has mountains, waters, lakes, bridges, towers. It was a very poetic city. "

" China is a place where you can experience two very contrasting things coexisting. First, the rich, cultural history of the country - and, second, rapid urbanization. "

" Chinese people need to be aware of their present and ask, 'What's our culture? What can we bring to the world?' I don't think there's anything wrong with that. "

" 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. "

" Historically, sci-fi movies have played an important role in inspiring young people. "

" I actually feel like a very traditional architect. "

" I don't like to talk about sustainability, because sometimes I see green buildings that don't appear any different from those in the past. "

" I don't use tools to create things, but I use them to realize things. "

" If we're talking about the urban landscape as an advanced, forward-thinking art form, there must be some intellectual thinking involved. "

" If you look at ancient Chinese paintings, you see mountains, but they are not real mountains; it is something the artists imagined. "

" 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. "

" I grew up in the old neighborhood of Beijing where you had a courtyard and trees. Actually, the whole of Beijing was a garden - the Forbidden City - and the lakes and gardens in the city center were all artificial. "

" 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. "

" I'm trying to create architecture as landscape. But I'm not copying nature. "

" I'm trying to express nature in big cities. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In China, we had some buildings that looked like the White House or wine bottles. All they seemed to represent was bad taste. "

" In our traditional culture, people have a very different view towards nature than in Western culture. We consider humans as part of nature. But in the West, they talk about protecting nature. That's a joke because nature doesn't care; it's humans who need to protect themselves. "

" Instead of making grand structures and beautiful buildings, we should focus on the environment and the urban space and how you encourage people to live. "

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