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" 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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" We need to enter a new era to make nature and humans more emotionally connected in modern cities. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My first impression of Beverly Hills was that it had a landscape of small houses built by famous architects, so I didn't want to make a big block or sculpture here; I wanted to make a community rooted to the place. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Sometimes I sketch and then scan my sketch directly to make the curves more freehand. I don't want to make perfect industrial curves. "

" 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. "

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

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

" The way we do our architecture is to show that we can come up with our own solutions. We don't just take orders. "

" 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. "

" When you look at classical structures, they're often linked to literature, music, or a poem. They were constructed by master builders, which means it's not something standard that you can copy. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I treat my projects as art. "

" 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. "

" Architects like to work in a problematic environment. "

" When I was young and used to look at Chinese architecture, there was no clear definition between what was landscaping and what was architecture. "

" 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. "