Quotes from Ma Yansong

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

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

I'm trying to express nature in big cities.

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

It's very strange: if you're a philosopher or musician or an artist, people automatically believe you can see the future. Even if they don't like you, they accept your vision as an individual.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Architects like to work in a problematic environment.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

The world itself is already a great textbook.