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" 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. "
Ma Yansong
Present
Think
World
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" Tiananmen Square is a sensitive topic because many things happened there. The idea of turning the plaza into a forest makes many people feel uncomfortable. "
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" 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. "
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" We need architects to be visionaries. "
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" We try to turn buildings into landscapes - defying the idea of modernism which sees nature and buildings as two distinct elements. "
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" Although we're architects, we believe we do culture; architecture is culture, and the topics we tackle will always arise a broader debate. "
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" I think architects have a major role in being responsible for illustrating what the future could be. Because of the very strong political and commercial climate, many architects are trying very hard to solve everyday issues, to respond to the authorities. "
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" 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. "
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" Sometimes I sketch and then scan my sketch directly to make the curves more freehand. I don't want to make perfect industrial curves. "
Ma Yansong
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" In traditional cities like Beijing, Nanjing, and Hangzhou, nature was a very important part of urban planning - not only as a landscape but a part of daily life. "
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" 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. "
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" I treat my projects as art. "
Ma Yansong
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" 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. "
Ma Yansong
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You
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" A door handle is very symbolic to me. It is the first object that one will interact with before entering a new space. "
Ma Yansong
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Architecture is a special kind of career that showcases the accumulations of culture, time, and history. "
Ma Yansong
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" People love to go closer to nature and other people, so we need to create environments that let people have these emotional connections. "
Ma Yansong
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" 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
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" We proposed Tiananmen Square - this very empty political square in the city centre - should turn green. Maybe in the future, this space could become a very human and open urban space. And if that happens, I think that all the cities around China will follow to change. "
Ma Yansong
City
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" People can live in nature, and they won't necessarily destroy it. "
Ma Yansong
People
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" People think that buildings are permanent, but in China, this isn't true; we can always demolish and remake it better. "
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" 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. "
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" Modern buildings have become memorials to power and capital. More and more, they're isolated from people. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Architecture is about experience: not only visual but also what you can touch, what you can feel. "
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" I think, in our modern cities, there are a lot of boxes; there are a lot of straight lines. They often deal with efficiency, the function, the structure. "
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" If we're talking about the urban landscape as an advanced, forward-thinking art form, there must be some intellectual thinking involved. "
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