10 projects to understand the architecture of MAD and Ma Yansong

The building dedicated to visual storytelling, and MAD's first museum in the United States, stands out like a Star Wars spaceship on the area once used as a car park in Exposition Park in downtown Los Angeles, evoking through its sinuous forms the choreography of changing clouds in the sky and the city's complex topography. The formal modelling expands seamlessly into the landscape in a synergistic dialogue between architecture and nature, where the park foreshadows a narrative as complex and compelling as the museum itself. The five-storey complex includes exhibition spaces, cinemas, a library, a bar and restaurants, as well as a large panoramic terrace.

Located in the heart of “China’s “Silicon Valley”, the project covers an area of 9.7 hectares and includes the Museum of Craft and Design and the Museum of Life and Science, set in a large public green space in the centre of the Houhai waterfront in the Nanshan district. The project provides a surreal setting: macroscopic pebble-shaped constructions like a giant Zen garden, nestled between the high-rise city on one side and the ocean on the other, offering an immersive, almost dreamlike experience between artifice and nature, futurism and tradition.

The museum in Katendrecht, the historic port district from which migrants departed from Europe to the New World, occupies the space of an old warehouse built in the 1920s, partially destroyed by fire and bombing and “risen from the ashes” (like a phoenix) in the 1950s in the form of two separate buildings, Fenix I and Fenix II. Mad's project involved the renovation of Fenix II, revisited with regard to its prestigious typological features and reconfigured to house the cultural, social and exhibition spaces of the new immigration museum. In the lobby, a mastodontic and enveloping 30-metre-high double spiral staircase, entirely clad in reflective stainless steel panels, leads from the ground floor to the panoramic roof, recalling the tortuous flows of migration and towering over the existing space like a “Tornado” (the name of the work).

The 16-story mixed-use complex, located in the River North Art District, which is undergoing a major transformation from an industrial center to a cultural hub, echoes the mountainous terrain of the area with rocky gorges and various vegetation, re-proposing the image of a canyon. The main façade, entirely glazed, is split by a deep wound-like crack that starts on the ground floor and extends from the sixth to the ninth floor, including approximately 1,200 square meters of landscaped terraces and observation points, before narrowing at the top and culminating in a panoramic terrace: a gesture that transcends formalism to convey a broader idea of rethinking high-rise living spaces, no longer as concrete containers but as ecosystems integrating human beings into nature.

Located on the site of a traditional siheyuan courtyard dating back to 1725, the project renovates and converts the historic buildings into a kindergarten for children aged two to five, introducing a new building that completely wraps around the historic ones, and creating a vibrant narrative of urban stratification between old and new. The new structure encourages the exploratory enthusiasm typical of childhood: the open-plan teaching space dotted with courtyards and staircases leading to the roof with its playground – coloured red-orange in contrast to the dark roofs of the historic buildings – turns into architectural design the children’s thirst for adventure, offering them the freedom to climb onto the roof and discover new perspectives.

Gardenhouse is a mixed-use residential complex that defies the recurring concept of standardised and anonymous condominiums, offering an alternative living environment surrounded by nature that fosters neighbourly dynamics. The project consists of 18 residential units of various types (studios, flats, terraced houses and villas) and commercial spaces on the ground floor, forming a “courtyard village” around a central common space. Clean volumes with pitched roofs and irregular openings evoke the rhythm of the Los Angeles hills; externally, a vertical green façade, planted with drought-resistant native species, creates an organic and animated backdrop on the street, screening the domestic intimacy.

In the heart of of an often snow-covered region in the Japanese archipelago, the project involved the renovation and enhancement of an old tourist tunnel built in 1996 to allow visitors to enjoy panoramic views of one of the country’s most spectacular gorges. The permanent installation “Tunnel of Light” features several observation and stopover points along a 750-metre route, and is inspired by the natural elements (fire, water, air and earth) according to a minimalist approach which, without overlapping with the natural landscape, leads to a dreamlike experience of the context between stainless steel walls and floors covered with a veil of water.

In Harbin, known as the “music capital” of northern China, Mad designed an opera house that blends seamlessly with its natural surroundings. The complex, which houses a main stage with 1,600 seats and a secondary stage with 400 seats, is part of Harbin’s “culture island” on the Songhua River, alongside other institutions. Inspired by the climatic characteristics of the cold and humid area, the building stands like a snow-covered mountain eroded by wind and rain, dissolving the boundary between the built environment and nature through fluid forms and evanescent surfaces. On the outside, the façade cladding in white aluminium panels creates a play of light reflections, while on the inside, the “ice” melts into soft, enveloping atmospheres shaped by undulating wooden surfaces. 

In Mississauga, a suburb west of the Toronto metropolitan area, the Absolute Towers are characterised by sinuous, sculptural forms, as if shaped by the wind, renewing and enriching the often anonymous typology of the skyscraper. The two residential towers are characterised by their fluid, twisting shape, with each floor rotating slightly from the one below. Continuous balconies wrap around the entire perimeter, offering 360-degree panoramic views and allowing the building to set back the glass façade, so as to emphasise the chiaroscuro effects and the perception of slenderness and dynamism of the structure.

Hutong Bubble 32 is the first prototype created as part of the Beijing 2050 vision, originally presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2006. The concept involves the development of “micro-scale” interventions based on a "network" replicability logic to preserve Beijing’s historic "hutong" neighbourhoods, characterised by narrow alleys and traditional dwellings (generally without private toilets) and increasingly swept away by the relentless building pace of the metropolis. The proposal pursues an additive and adaptive approach that does not involve demolition but offers a functional and symbolically powerful solution. In Hutong Bubble 32, the bubble-shaped construction, set in an old courtyard, houses toilets and a staircase leading to a terrace; in Bubble 218, completed in 2019, a staircase and a workspace are added to another house; the smooth, reflective surface contrasts sharply with the existing wooden and brick finishes of the surroundings.

Fish Tank is a functioning aquarium, exhibited in 2004 at the first Beijing Architecture Biennale. The concept offers an unconventional and provocative reinterpretation of standard aquariums, drawing a parallel between the cramped spatial confines in which goldfish are forced to live and those of human dwellings, which are sometimes dehumanising and detached from the natural world. The resin volume is characterised by a sinuous and dynamically deformed shape inspired by the swimming movements of its inhabitants, undermining the traditional anthropocentric view and suggesting the need to question generic mass-produced cubes and, in a broader sense, the paradigms of functionalist aesthetics inherited from the Modern.