Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Ma Yansong

Sky

Way

Our

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

" We need to be brave and tell the politicians what a better future could be. "

" Architects think that beauty is a crime. "

" We need architects to be visionaries. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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 think where traditional values are concerned, Chinese people see nature as very symbolic. It's a form of culture. "

" 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. "

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

" When I graduated from high school, I thought I wanted to make science fiction movies, so I applied to film school, but I couldn't get in. A professor told me I should try architecture instead. "

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

" We try to turn buildings into landscapes - defying the idea of modernism which sees nature and buildings as two distinct elements. "

" The world itself is already a great textbook. "

" 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. "

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

Ma Yansong

Become

People

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Ma Yansong

Life

Nature

" Since the Beijing Olympics in 2008, our office has been discussing how we can make architecture more human and at one with nature. We need to ask ourselves, what legacy do we want to leave behind on humankind's urban culture? "

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

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

" The architecture scene in China is the most open and free climate compared to many other places. You can find many opportunities. "