Chinese architect’s nature-infused buildings take world by storm
Awards flow for Beijing-based Ma Yansong, a protégé of Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry, whose work confronts what he sees as the coldness of a lot of modern architecture
He was with his mother, an environmental engineer, at her lab in Beijing, examining a cup of polluted water. “My mother put something in the cup, and the water immediately changed colour and became clear. I’m not sure if you could drink it, but it showed me magic, that nature is important and that humans can change it. Of course, it also made me wonder why people had to make the water dirty in the first place.”
That driving curiosity, and a gradually evolving awareness of the environment, has made Ma, 41, one of the most avant-garde designers of his generation, known for his ability to merge landscapes with the strictures of architecture for what he likes to describe as “human-scale design.”
Based in Beijing, where he runs MAD Architects, Ma is more often than not on a plane these days. Recently he was overseeing a project in Istanbul before dropping into Los Angeles for a couple of days, where he delivered a keynote speech at the Los Angeles Architectural Awards. He is also working on his first US project, in Beverly Hills, which broke ground in May, and his first European commission, a residential development outside Paris.
“I’m more interested in landscaping, which was inspired by my traditional Chinese culture. I grew up there. You see it in many art forms,” said Ma, in the airy, light-filled space of his second studio, in Santa Monica.
“When I was young and used to look at Chinese architecture, there was no clear definition between what was landscaping and what was architecture,” he said. “There were buildings around me, but there were nature elements, pavilions, and it was a mixed experience. Architecture should be about the landscape; it should be beautiful.”