Ma Yansong, a leading figure on the international contemporary architecture scene, began the initiatives of Milano Arch Week (21-26 May) on 21 May at Politecnico di Milano with an interesting and very well-attended lecture.
The Chinese architect, founder of the firm MAD Architects in 2004, introduced by Matteo Ruta and interviewed by Matteo Vercelloni for Interni, the media partner of the initiative, addressed the main theme of the third edition of Milano Arch Week, ‘Anthropocene and Architecture,’ illustrating his projects from the past and those in progress, many of which have been published in Interni.
Projected on a large screen, the works of Ma Yansong were examined in their narrative power, on all various scales. From the small Hutong Bubble in 2010 in the historical fabric of Beijing to the City Art Museum of Ordos in 2011, the large Opera House of Harbin in 2015 to the Huangshang Mountain Village in 2017, the Absolute Towers of 2012 at Mississauga, Canada, and the future George Lucas Museum in Los Angeles inside a public park, just to name a few of the works, the studio’s philosophy mixes landscape and architecture, city and country, multimedia technology and art, erasing disciplinary boundaries and the conventional monotony of modernist facades and roofs.