Beijing, China
CNN
—
Chinese skylines have been subjected to tremendous change over the past decade. Heritage sites and huge swaths of traditional housing have been razed and replaced with soaring towers symbolizing wealth, development and power.
With hundreds of millions of people set to migrate from rural areas to cities by 2020 as part of the Chinese government’s ambitious urbanization program, the number of skyscrapers built to accommodate them will continue to grow – but not necessarily in an imaginative way.
MAD Architects
Located in the oceanfront of Southern China, this vast residential complex combines high rise structure and undulating typology, aiming for a high-density solution.
MAD Architects
The design for Urban Forest is intended to integrate nature with "stacked" open floors and areas that include patios and sky gardens.
Image: Courtesy MAD Architects
Floor to ceiling glass windows provide a panoramic view of the city.
Iwan Baan/courtesy mad architects
The polished bronze metal facade of the Ordos Museum is intended to represent the rising sun over the surrounding grasslands.
Iwan Baan/courtesy mad architects
Influenced by Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, the architects designed a form of abstract container to protect the interior from its harsh local climate.
MAD Architects
The Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center embodies the Chinese notion of "shanshui," meaning mountain and water. The building responds to the surrounding mountains and rivers while meeting the material needs of urban life.
Image: Courtesy MAD Architects
Curvaceous glass walls flow like waterfalls and corridors and paths weave through the complexes, creating a poetic movement.
Image: Courtesy MAD Architects
The project is on track to be completed in 2017.
Iwan Baan/courtesy MAD Architects
Located at the intersection of two main streets, the Absolute Towers are one of the city's well-known landmarks.
Image: Courtesy Iwan Baan
The Absolute Towers look as if they are "rotating", depending on your vantage point.
Image: Courtesy Iwan Baan
The buildings' curvaceous form has been likened to Marilyn Monroe.
Hufton Crow/courtesy mad architects
The Harbin Opera House effortlessly blends in with its surroundings in the untamed northern region.
Iwan Baan/courtesy MAD architects
Made of white aluminum panels and glass pyramids, the opera house references the snow and ice of Harbin's sub-zero climate.
Adam Mork/courtesy mad architects
With an interior sculpted from Manchurian Ash wood, its spatial arrangement offers world-class acoustics.
Image: Courtesy MAD Architects
Located near the Huangshan Mountains in China's Anhui province, this village blurs the boundaries between modern architecture and nature.
courtesy mad architects
The village faces the serene Taiping lake.
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Its form blends seamlessly into the surrounding limestone cliffs.
MAD Architects
The UNIC, still under construction, will be built in collaboration with the French architecture firm Biecher Architectes.
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The 50-meters-tall building, situated in the neighborhood of Clichy-Batignolles, is made of 13 organically stacked terraces.
Image: Courtesy MAD Architects
The Chaoyang Park Plaza, composed of over 120,000 square meters, took inspiration from Chinese classical landscape paintings, which often feature lakes, springs, forests, and stones.
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Completed in 2016, the Chaoyang Park Plaza has green features such as natural lighting and a passive ventilation system integrated in the complex.
MAD Architects
The smooth vertical lines flowing down the buildings resemble river stones that have been eroded over a long period of time.
Iwan Baan/courtesy mad architects
The China Wood Sculpture Museum is an example of a sustainable design by MAD Architects. Solid walls help to save energy and retain heat.
Image: Courtesy MAD Architects
Polished metal plates on the exterior mirror the city lights at night.
Image: Courtesy MAD Architects
This metallic bubble is located in one of Beijing's oldest neighborhoods.
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The Hutong Bubble, a designer outhouse with a single toilet and staircase, is part of an initiative to help the community.
Utilitarian housing and office blocks are the hallmark of burgeoning cities in China. Megacities like Beijing are already overrun with them, creating cityscapes that feel “artificial,” as Beijing-based architect Ma Yansong observes.
“I think in our modern cities there are a lot of boxes; there are a lot of straight lines,” he says. “They often deal with efficiency, the function, the structure.
“There’s no nature. People love to go closer to nature and other people, so we need to create environments that let people have these emotional connections.”
Ma, the founder of the world-renowned MAD Architects, has built a poetic portfolio of buildings that adhere to his “Shanshui City” design philosophy. “Shanshui” which translates to “mountain, water” embraces the integration of organic forms and Eastern design principles, emphasizing nature at the core of urban planning.
New photos of MAD’s Huangshan Mountain Village, in China’s Anhui province, show an undulating range of apartment complexes, a nod to the nearby limestone terraces of Huangshan (“Yellow Mountain”).
Photo by Laurian Ghinitoiu
MAD Architects completed the Huangshan Mountain Village in Anhui province, China in April, 2017.
MAD Architects
The project consists of 10 buildings. The tallest building has 21 floors.
Photo by Laurian Ghinitoiu
MAD's design approach views architecture as part of the landscape.
Photo by Laurian Ghinitoiu
Views towards Lake Taiping.
courtesy mad architects
Multiple levels resemble nearby tea terraces.
Photo by Laurian Ghinitoiu
The project is near China's famous Mount Huangshan, which is a UNESCO Heritage site.
Photo by Laurian Ghinitoiu
The idea of MAD's guiding "shanshui city" design philosophy (translated to "mountain-water") is to help shape people's emotional connection to nature.
Photo by Laurian Ghinitoiu
The structures' curved, organic lines are designed to resemble the surrounding landforms.
Image: Courtesy MAD Architects
The architects sought to design a high-density building that could co-exist with nature.
courtesy mad architects
A rendering of Huangshan Mountain Village.
In cities, Ma has often disrupted the usual “emotionless” lines and “industrial curves” to create structures influenced by Chinese classical paintings, the extreme curves of mountains, the gentle lines of the desert and even (in the case of the voluptuous Absolute Towers in Ontario, nicknamed “Marilyn”) the human body.
Although China was once considered to be an architect’s playground, the country’s economic slowdown – coupled with President Xi Jinping’s aversion to “weird architecture” – means that the future of its cities has yet to be written.
“In traditional cities like Beijing, Nanjing and Hangzhou, nature was a very important part of urban planning. Not only as a landscape, but a part of daily life,” Ma says. “It’s a beautiful garden, let’s say. But they were all low density.”
Ma wants to apply his Shanshui City philosophy to the expanding cities of the future.
“There must be some new way (in which) we can have high density and, at the same time, have a beautiful landscape in an urban situation.
“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.”
Watch the video above for an interview with the architect on why curves matter.