马岩松接受外媒采访

　　11月5日，MAD事务所马岩松接受了外国媒体的访问，建筑中国网第一时间为您拿到了采访原稿。

马岩松

and then you stop working or you have to go back?
I have to come back (laughs).
sometimes when I have no meetings in the office
I stay at home and only when they sleep I come back.

what kind of music do you listen to at the moment?
nothing special.
If I'm happy I listen to the radio.
3 days ago I went to the concert hall by frank gehry and
they just happened to have a classical music performance.
I'm not sure if it was the space or the music but I really
enjoyed myself.

do you listen to the radio?
in the car, mostly.

what books do you have on your bedside table?
I don't buy books, but a lot of people send me books,
so it depends on what books they send to me.

do you read design / architecture / fashion magazines?
I only read the magazines with our work in them.
again, because that's what they send to us and this
is already much to read, but I flip through many architectural
and design magazines regularily. I also like fashion
magazines and some graphic books.

where do you get news from?
the internet

I assume you notice how women dress.
do you have any preferences?
I like a women who dresses very clean and simple but also
manages to have a good contrast of colour to make
her look very cool.

what kind of clothes do you avoid wearing?
usually I avoid wearing colourful clothing, but this depends
on my mood. when I'm depressed I wear the same clothes
4 or 5 times. in these moments I really don't care and
I don't want people to look at me, but sometimes when
I'm with my kids and their friends my mood changes
completely and I wear something casual and very colorful
- but that does not happen alot to me.
on the other hand being a young architect and when
giving presentations I also need to look 'cool' or wear
something formal, such as a 'professional black suit'.

do you have any pets?
no. actually when I was in middle school I use to have a
dog and then I lost it. the story was that I used to ride my
bike to school everyday for 40 to 50 minutes and one day
along my route I found a dog and took it with me and stored
it under my desk. I continued doing this for the next 3 or
4 days until my teacher's told me I wasn't allowed.
so during class I left it in the playground but by the end
of the day it was gone, so that is my short pet experience.

when you were a child, did you want
to become an architect?
no.
I wanted to draw, be a professional painter.
I applied to art school and they didn't let me in (laughs).
the lecturers there suggested to me to study architecture,
as they said my fine art level was low.
for architecture it's probably OK (laughs).

where do you work on your projects?
my initial ideas come mostly from travel.
I can not stay all day in the office, I want to continually
go out, but most of the time I need to stay
in the office have meetings with the various design teams.

what project has given you the most satisfaction?
we did about 100 competitions in the first two years when
we started the firm. we didn't have time to organize
until recently when we did the archive and publishing work.
I like all these proposals somehow and I feel that they all
became important to me, because if it wasn't for the first
one I could never have progressed to the next project.
all these buildings, visions are a very honest body of work
with lots of potential.

a major project that helped the office to grow?
in the beginning I think we did too many competitions
and we only won one, however this is the one that made
us famous. it was an international competition outside china,
but made us recognized in china. this was the absolute towers
in toronto, canada. they bear the name of the property
but they are also called 'marilyn monroe', because of the
curves of the towers. this was in 2006, its already half
way done.

describe your style like a good friend of yours
would describe it.
last night I was thinking something (lol) -
the 'chinese dream' needs to be redefined with more
attention to the 'personal dream' of our people.
a dream where there are no political boundaries,
which then becomes the dream for human beings.
that's what interests me a lot. I always try to do something
which is open and free (perhaps involving nature).
there are those architects who are realistic architects
or those utopian architects. we are part of the first, we try
to plan something which is quiet real, something
you can visualize.

do you discuss your work with other architects?
yes. with young architects like bjarke ingels from BIG
in denmark and also michel rojkind from rojkind arquitectos
in mexico. those guys, like me, always travel around and
it happens that we sometimes meet and present our work
to each other. however we don't meet that often.
when I feel a bit lost in the office, I call up my friends and ask
for advice. one time I invited the young architects
tom wiscombe and elena manferdini from LA
(who are also teachers) and asked them to critique
our work. to them we gave a presentation for each
of our projects. I think that discussing your work is very
helpful, as sometimes I feel there are too many things going on.

who would you like to design something for?
I want to design a home for myself and for my family.
my parents stay with us as well.
sometimes when a family approaches us to design
a house I try to avoid it because all families have
different opinions and I don't know how to work with them,
but for my own family I feel it would be interesting.
I would listen to everyone's opinion and try very hard to
satisfy all. basically this house can change when people
grow. firstly it would have to be in a forest , in the middle
of nature - that's impossible in china (laughs). it would also
consist of a lot of courtyards with outdoor space.
something similar to the traditional buildings we had in
china once. another project I would like to do is a reading
room for myself. last month we went to a very special site,
with a beautiful lake. you can't really build a house there,
but perhaps build a temporary structure. I imagine a small
wooden container of maybe 2 square meters only,
where I can admire nature, whilst reading (laughs).

you envision a city of the future?
we did one project called the beijing 2050, in that vision
we created a green square. where once the whole area
was covered in concrete but now will be covered with trees.
there's no design, no actual shape and no architecture.
its only covered with trees. I feel that the trees don't only
mean 'green', it is also the idea of transforming this
'political space' into a more 'human space'.
we also proposed a floating city in a high density situation
in china, because the country's population will continue
to rise in the future. the situation is very special here,
in china, compared to the rest of the world.
china has a very powerful ambition. the 'chinese dream'
now is different from what china dreamed in history.
who knows what's next ? what we might need to build
high up in the sky? the project also involved preserving
the old city by inserting bubbles around it. right now we
are talking with some producers to see if we can make
a few models and do a movie about the project, so it would
be a tool to look back in history and compare how the
world actually turned out to be.

is there any designer and/or architect from the past,
you appreciate a lot?
I like mies van der rohe because his work is opposite
to what other people did at that time.

and those still working / contemporary?
zaha hadid, who was also my teacher
(she's not a good boss but was a very good teacher).
she's the first person that gave me a lot of contemporary
art books (in architecture school) and gave me good advice.
I like frank gehry's work, in the beginning he did very
commercial projects and then one day he changed -
that's very brave. in my work I try to link with his work.
... and toyo ito. he has given a great contribution to
the architectural world. he encourages a lot of people
and is a sort of tutor for many young architects.
I hope I can do this type of thing when I'm older.

please describe an evolution in your work,
from your first projects to the present day.
I think I'm still trying to find my way.
I have so many different interests...
for example, I think that it is amazing that we can
do this floating island project. that was in its original
version a student work of mine. at that time I didn't know
anything and I was totally not realistic. the first idea
was not so much the form itself. you know, you have
this idea in your heart and soul and you want to expose
it to the world by using all your energy...
usually when you're young you have great imagination
but cannot do anything with it. the pity of the architecture
industry is that it is full of old people. when they are given
the chance to do a 'significant something' they might not
remember what they wanted to do when they were
young. I think successful architects should do something
very original and not take away from that.

don't you suffer a work overload?
last month toyo ito came to my office and we talked
about cultural issues within the practice. I asked him
what I should do: 'there are so many big projects coming
in, if I do all of these I might lose control and maybe in
10 years time I will have 20 similar shaped buildings'.
I can choose to ignore all of this and do my own thing.
I don't design all these high-rises, but only nice small
buildings, but that's not reality.I cannot ignore where I am.
his answer was quiet encouraging, he said he always
dreamt of having this opportunity, but it never happened
to him at such a young age. and that building high-density
projects is something architects should continue to do
until they die. in the end I realized it was a silly question
(... because that is why I am living and working in china).

what advice would you give to the young?
don't hesitate.
make a decision fast. follow the first 5 seconds instinct.
if you think you need to compare and you hesitate,
then it must be a wrong decision. as in your life one
decision comes after the other and if you realize you do
something wrong, you know it is because of a previous
decision, which was a mistake. I think everyone should
follow their heart. robert stern, the dean of the arts and
architecture at yale says this to all the students on their
graduation day : 'you should forget everything you learnt
from school and start on your own. no matter who said
what, you should believe only in yourself'.