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

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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. "

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

" The shan-shui city idea is trying to bring traditional values and ways of living to modern high-rise architecture. "

" I think architecture should be a stage, not something too material - more of an environment, not a product. "

" People can live in nature, and they won't necessarily destroy it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" To allow millions of people to live together on limited land, we have to go to the sky; we have to build a high rise. But we can still build nature and social space into the towers. Each family can have their own courtyard in the sky. "

" I would say that many architects are very logical. They start their process from analysis and from rational processes to try and find the 'right' answer, like solving a mathematic equation. "

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

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

" 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. "

" '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. "

" People love to go closer to nature and other people, so we need to create environments that let people have these emotional connections. "

" The way a human can coexist with nature has to be at the spiritual level. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" People think that buildings are permanent, but in China, this isn't true; we can always demolish and remake it better. "

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

" 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. "

" Modern buildings have become memorials to power and capital. More and more, they're isolated from people. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I actually feel like a very traditional architect. "

" The city of the future development will be shifted from the pursuit of material civilisation to the pursuit of nature. This is what happens after human beings experience industrial civilisation at the expense of the natural environment. "

" 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. "