Ma Yansong Quotes

Architecture is by definition a very collaborative process.

In architecture you should live for 150 years, because you have to learn in the first 75 years.

People outside the profession of architecture perhaps often lack the understanding of how their physical environment comes into being. What are the processes, the concerns and considerations? What are the parameters that shape the world around them?

I would say that many architects are very logical. They start their process from analysis and from rational processes to try and find the 'right' answer, like solving a mathematic equation.

I think architects design outside in. Or they design basically outside. They don't get in the building anymore.

I practised as an architect for 10 years. I qualified in 1973 with a fellowship diploma of architecture. World Series Cricket gave me the freedom to go out and pursue architecture.

I want a painting to be difficult to do. The more obstacles, obstructions, problems - if they don't overwhelm - the better. I would like to feel that I am involved at any stage of the painting with all its moments, not just this 'now' moment where a superficial grace is so available.

Architecture is invention.

If you get stuck, draw with a different pen. Change your tools; it may free your thinking.

The impossible - we are told - cannot be achieved. To overcome the 'impossible,' we need to use our wits and be fearless. We need to break the rules and to circumvent - some would one say to cheat.

I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.

Everything we do is designed, whether we're producing a magazine, a website, or a bridge. Design is really the creative invention that designs everything.

If you write your own tools, you can sort of see new things, design new things.

Architecture students are generally given theoretical projects, often located at distant locations, and told to come up with a design.

I'm working on a school of architecture in China. It's rare that an architect gets to design a school of architecture, and here I get to do it. I'm so pleased that they asked me.

A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.

Who I am as an architect and the history of my work - that's clear to anybody who hires me. But I come in literally with nothing in my brain about what the building will look like.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

Something like 'Abstract' can really give people access to the behind-the-scenes of how our physical surroundings take shape.

My idea of artistry has always been 'try everything until you find out what works.'

One of the things that is particularly precious about working at Apple is that many of us on the design team have worked together for 15-plus years, and there's a wonderful thing about learning as a group. A fundamental part of that is making mistakes together.

The way I feel about rehearsals is that the best idea wins.

We forget the importance of engineering, but it's been used to design everything from St. Paul's Cathedral to The Shard.

If you just storyboard something, you've already planned it, and you're stuck in the limitations of your imagination.

Ultimately, the artistic part of architecture has always interested me.