73 Quotes by Ma Yansong

We need architects to be visionaries.

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

'Shan shui' you can literally translate as 'mountain and water.' In traditional Chinese culture, there are a lot of paintings about shan shui, but now we're talking about a shan-shui city.

I think architecture should be a stage, not something too material - more of an environment, not a product.

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

I treat my projects as art.

I'm trying to express nature in big cities.

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.

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.