“In China, we would have demolished it”: Ma Yansong’s lecture at the Politecnico di Milano

During Milan Design Week, Domus brought Ma Yansong, its 2026 guest editor, to the Politecnico di Milano for a lectio magistralis that felt less like an academic lecture and more like a moment of awareness — and a clear statement — about the future of architecture. “Architecture is not architecture,” Ma opens, with a statement that only surprises those who haven’t been following the issues of Domus he is editing since the beginning of the year. For the Chinese architect and founder of MAD, architecture is fantasy, nature, participation, body, movement — all themes that will be explored in the magazine in the coming months.

Ma Yansong challenges what we take for granted. “We’ve been studying architecture for a long time, or practicing for a long time. So what’s architecture?” he asks. For him, the discipline can no longer be understood through traditional categories.

Ma Yansong

His editorial work with Domus stems from this very need. “We want to open the conversation, make this profession not so closed,” he explains. In the issues he curates, architecture becomes something broader, shifting the focus from the built object to experience. “We not just draw buildings, but we need to give reasons why we’re doing this and what it’s for.”

In Ma’s narrative, China is both a starting point and a reference frame. “We used to build a lot… we built one city in one year,” he recalls. A period of rapid expansion that has now slowed down, leaving room for a new awareness: “We want to build more nature more than concrete boxes, because we need nature… humans living in the city are lacking this connection to nature.”

And what has been missing, according to Ma, is also a connection with people. Today, young architects seem to have fewer large-scale opportunities. “They go to more smaller scale, the neighborhood, the human scale buildings. They have to know how people live.” This is not just about sustainability, but about a paradigm shift. “People living in the city, they’re lacking this connection to nature,” he insists, explaining how his studio seeks to reintroduce nature not as decoration, but as an integral part of architectural experience.

The Tour Montparnasse in Paris is a controversial building, often perceived as an intrusive presence within the urban fabric. In recent years, the city launched an international competition — later won by Renzo Piano’s studio — involving some of the world’s leading architects. “When I saw it, I thought: in China, we would just demolish the building. That’s much easier,” Ma says, without hesitation.

The remark draws a few smiles in the lecture hall, but it also reveals a deeper cultural difference. “But they want to keep it,” he adds, referring to the European approach to preservation, which requires more nuanced strategies.

His proposal does not erase the building but transforms it through optical illusion. From a distance, the Eiffel Tower appears mirrored on the Montparnasse Tower — upside down. “By doing the reflection, we can make the building blend into the background more,” he explains, challenging the very idea of the skyscraper. “It’s not about making it more beautiful,” he adds, “but questioning why we built the first high-rise… and why we still build them today.”

This tension between critique and design runs through all of Ma’s work. In the projects he presented — from the Absolute Towers to the Fenix Museum in Rotterdam — architecture tends to dissolve, becoming landscape, merging built and natural environments. “I don’t want to build a building… I want to make something responding to people,” he says. “We create relationships.”

At the same time, Ma questions the role of the architect itself. He believes the profession carries “much more obligation,” yet also acknowledges that “architecture is not that influential anymore,” pointing to its diminishing cultural centrality. This, he suggests, is precisely why architects must strive to be more open and more connected to people’s lives. The reference to Chinese tradition returns once again: “Mountains are not mountains. Water is not water.”

Ma Yansong

“What’s architecture in the future, in tomorrow?” he asks toward the end of the lecture. No one in the room can provide a definitive answer — not even him. But the direction of his practice is clear: “We need to understand their need… and make something responding to them.” An architecture that listens more, understands more, and ultimately responds — not just to buildings, but to people and the world they inhabit.