Ma Yansong Quotes

I am finally getting the chance to build large structures and break preconceptions that my designs are just sculptures for people to be in. But my work always comes down to the human scale.

My buildings don't speak in words but by means of their own spaciousness.

Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise.

Light is something that can really change your perception of space.

Buildings are forms of performances.

My buildings should have an emotional core - a space which, in itself, has an emotional nice feeling.

Landscape architecture is basically geodesign; it's designing geography. And yet geodesign is not only done by landscape architects, it's done by some of the world's largest corporations.

The aesthetic of architecture has to be rooted in a broader idea about human activities like walking, relaxing and communicating. Architecture thinks about how these activities can be given added value.

You might say that when you step inside, you're entering a honorific space, but that's something totally different than experiencing it. And in architecture the experience comes first. That has the deepest effect on us.

A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.

I don't build because I am an architect. I can make true architecture because I do not build.

When you have rules to abide by, does that curtail you as a designer, or set you free? People think of classical architecture visually, but I think the brilliant part of it is actually spatial.

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.

For me, the excitement in architecture revolves around the idea and the phenomenon of the experience of that idea. Residences offer almost immediate gratification. You can shape space, light, and materials to a degree that you sometimes can't in larger projects.

I think space, architectural space, is my thing. It's not about facade, elevation, making image, making money. My passion is creating space.

Architecture is a art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere and when this environment produces well being.

Light is architectural. It is sculptural.

People don't realize that lighting can change the whole look of a place and the feel.

For me, architecture is not just creating a space to protect people but to make them dream as well.

Lighting is everything. It creates mood and has an emotional effect on you.

The essence of architecture is form and space, and light is the essential element to the key to architectural design, probably more important than anything. Technology and materials are secondary.

I think architecture is one of the predominant orderings of social space. It can construct and contain our experiences. It defines our days and nights. It literally puts us in our place.

Architecture is not all about the design of the building and nothing else, it is also about the cultural setting and the ambience, the whole affair.

If the glass there in front of me astounds me more than all the glasses I've seen in painting, and if I even think that the greatest architectural wonder of the world couldn't affect me more than this glass, it's really not worth while going to the Indies to see some temple or other when I have as much and more right in front of me.

L’architecture est art de suggestion.