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" 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. "

Ma Yansong

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Copy

Literature

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" When we talk about a city, we need to talk about what the future is. Whats the ideal scenario in the future? "

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

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

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

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

" 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

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

" The beauty of architecture is it involves work that stretches over a very long time but often starts in one instant, with just one emotion, a kind of instinctual response. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Architects think that beauty is a crime. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

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

" The world itself is already a great textbook. "

" I treat my projects as art. "

" 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. "

" 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, 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. "

" 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. "

" Ultimately, the artistic part of architecture has always interested me. "

Ma Yansong

Interested

Always

" 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. "