Archinect - News

Iwan Baan photographs MAD's newly completed Chaoyang Park Plaza

2017-12-26T13:03:00-05:00

MAD Architects recently completed their massive Chaoyang Park Plaza, a 220,000 square meter, 10 building complex which draws on classic Chinese landscape paintings in its design. Completed just in time for the end of the year, this recently released set of images by acclaimed architectural photographer Iwan Baan demonstrate why the rock-shaped towers are making everyone's end of the year lists!

Photo by Iwan Baan.

MAD completes Chaoyang Park Plaza, dubbed as “Beijing's Central Park”

2017-12-04T18:42:00-05:00

MAD Architects looked to classic Chinese landscape paintings in designing the new Chaoyang Park Plaza, built within Beijing's central business district. Built at the southern edge of Chaoyang Park, the new 220,000 square-meter complex has a similar function to that of New York City's Central Park, according to the architects.

MAD Architects focused on creating a tranquil, mysterious atmosphere where nature and architecture blend. The scheme comprises 10 buildings designed with curved organic forms in black and white — a nod to traditional Chinese ink painting.

Photo © Hufton+Crow.

The centerpiece of the scheme is two asymmetrical twin office towers. Appearing like two emerging mountain peaks, the towers are connected by a glass atrium. Smaller low-rise commercial buildings near the towers look like mountain rocks that eroded over time. The buildings' seemingly random arrangement creates space for a secluded yet open urban garden where people can gather.

Photo © Hufton+Crow.

Photo © H...

MAD designs a futuristic new campus for Faraday Future

2017-07-18T12:15:00-04:00

Appropriate to its sci-fi ambitions and branding, Faraday Future has enlisted MAD to design a new campus that suggests “extraterrestrial objects capable of de-familiarizing employees and prospective clients with the status quo of the contemporary automotive market.”

Sited on Mare Island in Northern California, the campus will cover approximately 130,000 square meters, of which 20,000 square meters will be buildings. Specifically, the campus features two low, metallic structures as well as a “user experience center” comprising a sculptural reflective tower. From its heights, clients can watch as their car is transported from a warehouse to an exhibition hall via an elevated light rail. Non-client visitors will also be able to visit the experience center.

Image Courtesy of MAD Architects

The site, which used to be a naval base, will have a double-height facility punctured by a series of internal courtyards, intended to ser...

Rejecting modernist master planning notions, MAD's Milan master plan repurposes dilapidated rail yards by symbiosis

2017-04-27T14:02:00-04:00

Repurposing and renovation have gained greater appeal in the years since the overwhelming success of The High Line, extending to a variety of applications and structures. At the recent Milan Design Week, MAD took this to a new level by showcasing their proposal for a new masterplan of Milan, which transforms dilapidated rail yards into a series of thriving new city districts, or micro-systems.

According to MAD, these spatial districts, termed “City of Connections,” “City of Green,” “City of Living,” “City of Culture,” and “City of Resources" each address "a vernacular development typical of Italian cities, where various typological elements and scales are overlapped into dense systems of relations. Designing first at the human scale within recognizable landmarks, the broader urban scale is connected to smaller ones through the interjection of topographic landscapes, serving to unify the continually changing relations of the pedestrian, city, and nature. Each of the yards, following t...

MAD announces the 2017 Architecture Travel Fellowship for students

2017-04-19T16:59:00-04:00

Back in 2009, Ma Yansong of MAD started a fellowship for young architects. Dubbed the MAD Architecture Travel Fellowship, it sends five international students to China, and five Chinese students out of the country. It's an incredibly simple application process: just submit a letter explaining your interests in architecture alongside a CV and a portfolio to travel@i-mad.com.

Check out MAD's new LA and SF designs for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

2016-10-27T13:48:00-04:00

After a long and obstructive political process (and some sad looking pics of Rahm Emanuel) George Lucas' Museum of Narrative Art decided to abandon its attempt to build in Chicago and now is looking toward the Golden State: specifically, Treasure Island in San Francisco and Exposition Park in Los Angeles. Ma Yansong of MAD architects has subsequently whipped up some new proposed designs for each locale. First up, Exposition Park:

And Treasure Island:

For more on the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art:

First look at MAD's newly built Clover House

2016-08-24T18:02:00-04:00

Over one year after its groundbreaking ceremony, MAD's Clover House is now complete. Built next to a rice paddy field in Okazaki, the family-run kindergarten marks MAD's first project in Japan. Siblings Kentaro and Tamaki Nara, who originally operated the kindergarten from their family's two-story house, commissioned MAD to redesign the home into a new kindergarten that can provide a nurturing learning environment.

Wrapped in a white exterior shell, the Clover House's organic form and haphazardly placed windows are meant to evoke a sense of playfulness, as if it were “designed from a child's point of view,” stated MAD founder Ma Yansong. “We wanted to create a playful piece of architecture that would stay in the memory of the kids when they have grown up.”

During special occasions and school activities, the kids can doodle on the exterior shell as a way to create memories of their time there, MAD partner and Clover House lead architect Yosuke Hayano previously told Archinect. Students...

MAD reveals renderings of highly sustainable Xinhee Design Center

2016-08-10T18:00:00-04:00

Pretty much every element of MAD's design for the Xinhee Design Center factors in sustainability: water features, full-blown gardens and offices commingle on the six star-shaped floors that sprout from the central atrium, while an envelope of PTFE provides ventilation and shade.

Solar panels occupy the roof, while the footbridge in the atrium provides both air circulation and the opportunity for impromptu fashion modeling. The use of natural light throughout the building is aided in part by the facade's translucent coating, which allows light transmittance of up to 40%.

However, the concept behind the building is meant to reflect the business of the client, an international fashion group. As MAD founding principal Ma Yansong explains, “We envision it as a building with skin-and-bones. The correspondence of clothing and architecture is they both explore the relationship between the interior and the exterior.”

For more on MAD:

Embattled Lucas Museum may move to S.F.'s Treasure Island

2016-05-19T13:58:00-04:00

A spokeswoman for San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin confirmed that the city and museum representatives are in early discussions about a site on Treasure Island, a destination in San Francisco Bay famous for a naval base. Los Angeles is also trying to stay in the game, with Mayor Eric Garcetti saying that Lucas' project would find a good home in the heart of the movie industry.

The lawsuit averse Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is openly courting other cities after Chicago's Friends of the Park filed legal action to prevent the project from building on its chosen Chicago lakefront site, may wind up in San Francisco, although Los Angeles (and Waukegan, IL) have offered themselves up as well. Rahm Emanuel, who was a vocal champion of the Museum's proposed locale, recently suggested a compromise in the form of moving the museum to the Lake Michigan adjacent McCormick Place East, but no one is compromising as of yet.

The prequels to this particular saga:

Waukegan, IL: future home of the Lucas Museum?

2016-05-05T16:02:00-04:00

With the future of a Lucas Museum on Chicago's lakefront in doubt, the city of Waukegan is asking the organizers to look a little to the north. Waukegan Mayor Wayne Motley reached out to Mellody Hobson, a Chicago financial executive and the wife of "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, about locating the proposed museum featuring digital, traditional and narrative art on Waukegan's lakefront, a city spokesman said on Wednesday.

After a shake-up Tuesday wherein Chicago-based Friends of the Parks (which was taking a 30-day break from suing to prevent the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art from being built) announced that it wasn't going to budge on its anti-LMNA position, George Lucas announced that he was seriously considering other locations. According to the Chicago Tribune Lucas' wife, Mellody Hobson, noted that "this process has been co-opted and hijacked by a small special interest group." On Thursday, The Chicago Tribune reported that Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked his Law Department Wednesday afternoon to ask a federal appeals court to reject the Friends of the Parks case before it is tried. Could the force be with the industrial shoreline of Waukegan, Illinois, population 90K?

You can conquer the box-office, but stakeholder groups are a whole different echelon:

MAD slips through borders with Salone del Mobile installation

2016-04-13T13:53:00-04:00

Borders are often controversial and rarely flexible, but Ma Yansong of MAD has playfully reinterpreted them with his installation for the 2016 Salone del Mobile in Milan. “Borders are usually seen as something closed and unapproachable but I think it’s interesting to make borders attractive, dynamic and engaging," Yansong said about his 'Invisible Border' installation, which strings strands of EFTE across the Cortile d’Onore courtyard. "So we decided to play with the border between the historical loggias and the garden in front of it, and design a transition in-between them.”

Part shelter, part fragmented contemplation site for the sky above, the strands emit a whistling sound in the wind, and are designed to provide a surface for illumination at night (with lighting provided by iGuzzini Illuminazione).

“Our installation blurs the boundaries between the traditional and the contemporary. You see the difference in each end, but the transition is very organic," Yansong continued. "It’s ...

Chicagoans still split over lakefront Lucas Museum plans

2015-10-02T18:19:00-04:00

Opinions about the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art ranged from excitement to distaste as residents got their first chance to speak about the proposed addition to the lakefront at two public hearings this week. [...] The Chicago Park District sponsored the hearings Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss museum plans for architecture, landscaping and traffic.

Previously on Archinect:

MAD blurs boundaries with the Clover House kindergarten and teacher housing

2015-05-23T11:06:00-04:00

Exterior becomes interior, public space overlaps with private space, and society is integrated into nature: or is it? These are but a few of the concepts seemingly behind the design of MAD's Clover House, a Kindergarten adjacent to a Japanese rice paddy field that also serves as a private residence for the teachers of the school at night. The house had its official groundbreaking on May 13th, and has attracted international press attention for its undulating paper-like shell and innovative spatial configuration.

Built over a pre-existing 105 square meter row-house, the MAD design incorporates the existing wooden mass-produced home by removing its walls and draping a new exterior over the frame. This purposefully fosters a sense of community among the schoolchildren, which is in keeping with the school's stated mission to create openness and emotional bonds between its students.

But is the design itself actually articulated and reflective of its surroundings, or is it just another flas...

Al Jazeera looks at the opposition and support for Chicago's George Lucas museum

2014-12-17T17:02:00-05:00

Ash-har Quraishi reports on why some Chicagoans oppose a plan for a museum for the ‘Star Wars’ creator’s artwork

End of weird architecture in China?

2014-10-20T11:44:00-04:00

Art should serve the people, Xi Jinping says, and China's weird and wonderful buildings - including a mobile phone building, an excessivley blinged-up hotel, and a penis tower - are evidently not good examples of "morally inspiring art". Duh.

Is it possible Xi Jinping is using a diplomatic language to break loose from imported architecture? The so called elite star architecture now going to have third tier copies? Don't forget the elite post modernism was finally trickled down to strip mall architecture finally in early 90's.

This whole thing started with this link I got from my friend and continued with a conversation below.

Eliminate all weird architecture in China, Xi Jinping declares

Ben Lepley- Not sure what this means for MAD >:l

Orhan Ayyuce- Maybe he sees architecture as the poster child of socio-cultural threat?

BL- Or a threat of power from investors who cant be controlled by state owned banks? Or both.

OA- Are you back in China?

BL- No, in Tucson still. Clean air here. but I keep in contact with those who are still there. I'm not sure if this statement from Xi was off the cuff, or an actual decision, but it could be big. If you want to know more I can introduce you to one of my old MAD co-workers who is still there...

MAD completes the Absolute Towers in Mississauga

2012-12-14T13:53:00-05:00

Encountered on the street, they are enigmatic and shifting, even voluptuous. They appear carefully controlled, but their underlying geometry is far from obvious. Driving or walking by causes the towers' profiles to change continuously, and it would require significant mental acrobatics to map the relationship between profiles and construct a complete mental model of the building. From a closer vantage point, the geometric enigma remains, but a feature at another scale begins to dominate.

Domus on MAD's Absolute Towers

2012-11-07T18:52:00-05:00

For over a century, a simple dilemma has vexed architects. How to escape the formal monotony of a series of identical stacked plates, without losing the efficiency of the canonical high-rise formula? Through a series of astute formal moves, and by evoking empathy, Chinese architecture practice MAD has achieved a rare breakthrough.

National Art Museum of China Entry by MAD

2012-09-27T22:38:00-04:00

Only a few more weeks, and we will officially find out who has won the prestigious competition for NAMOC, the new National Art Museum of China in Beijing. Below is the entry of one of the twenty firms that were invited by the competition organizers to submit designs, Beijing-based firm MAD.

Previously: Jean Nouvel Said To Edge Gehry, Hadid For Beijing Museum Job

UPDATE: Jean Nouvel Confirmed as Winner of the National Art Museum of China Competition