Ma Yansong

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

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

"Architecture is a special kind of career that showcases the accumulations of culture, time, and history."

"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."

"The shan-shui city idea is trying to bring traditional values and ways of living to modern high-rise architecture."

"Ultimately, the artistic part of architecture has always interested me."

"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."

"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."

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

"When I started university, I didn't know much about architecture, so I flipped through a lot of magazines, looking at different and exciting images from all over the world. I thought that architecture could be interesting."

"A shan-shui city is a modern city, a high-density urban situation, but we pay more attention to the environment. We bring waterfalls; we bring in a lot of trees and gardens. We treat architecture as a landscape."

"Chaoyang Park Plaza is about how to carry the traditional culture into a new format in modern architecture. Instead of building a boundary between the city and the park, I tried to design this building to emerge from the natural landscape."

"Since the Beijing Olympics in 2008, our office has been discussing how we can make architecture more human and at one with nature. We need to ask ourselves, what legacy do we want to leave behind on humankind's urban culture?"

"The way we do our architecture is to show that we can come up with our own solutions. We don't just take orders."

"A lot of ancient poetry sees in nature a reflection of human emotions, and in a post-industrialized era, once people have become more aware of the necessity of a more harmonious relation between man and nature, we need to build cities which can connect with human spiritual needs instead of being merely functional."

"Although we're architects, we believe we do culture; architecture is culture, and the topics we tackle will always arise a broader debate."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We try to turn buildings into landscapes - defying the idea of modernism which sees nature and buildings as two distinct elements."