Hope to see you there!
CHECK OUT THE LEFT COLUMN FOR MORE OF THE HOP_SKI JUMP

Photo by Nicolaj Møller

<!– @page { size: 21cm 29.7cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } –>

AY 5.11.07, CPH

JDS: The first time I got acquainted with what you do, was when you won the absolute towers in Mississauga in Canada. I was in Toronto at the time, and my friends there described these two silhouettes as sensual female figures in a sea of phallic objects, basically two cute girls in an environment of guy architecture think it was a good way to be positioned, as an architectural set-up. A rather nice start for any architecture to be valued.

MAD: Compared to the context which is modern, steel, towers…our building wasn’t trying to show how high the building was, we used horizontal lines, like in nature – soft shapes. From each angle you’ll see the building as a different shape.

JDS: Yes, sometimes it’s actually quite fat, and at other times quite thin.

MAD: The boundary of the shape is blurred. This feeling is against the machine, against clear geometry.

JDS: It’s a very binary reaction isn’t it..

MAD: You can also call it an animal compared to the machine.

JDS: I have a question about the house you are doing in Denmark.

MAD: The biggest question for me is, where do I start. Because I come from China and it is a strange experience to come here. For instance, Chinese directors and artists do something very Chinese. But as an architect I cannot bring a temple, Chinese traditional architecture, to Europe.

JDS: And also you don’t want to.

MAD: Yeah, so the question for me is where should I start. Because modern architecture started in Europe and spread to all over the world including Asia and China. I continue to manipulate modernism in a more nature/human-way.

JDS: But if we talk about this house in Denmark. I’m curious to know what kind of client would come to a person like you for a single family house?

MAD: Actually a private developer. They will build one show house.

JDS: Part of your office statement is very Chinese. You claim being Chinese, which I think is an important thing to do because I think China is an important place. I saw you took part in the DESIGN ENERGY symposium in Malaysia, with my good friend Minsuk Cho…

China has a reputation of being one the world’s most polluting countries, yet there seem to be a rising awareness of environmental concerns… do you think those issues will be soon taken care of on a national level and a governmental legislation take place? I often think of china as the ultimate place to show the world how to handle environmental issues.

MAD: In fact we only have one or two projects which consider sustainability. Each project has different challenges.

JDS: In Europe we have this problem that sustainability has become.. like.. a cliché. It has become a buzzword in all the client’s demands. It’s only interesting to do it, if you really do it. In countries that are extremely problematic, like China, you don’t have a policy against this. why can’t we inject real policy in these countries.

There’s 3 of you: how do you work together?

MAD: We just.. work together.

JDS: I’m just curious. Because it’s a big issue to partner with people.

MAD: We’re dealing with different things. I go to meet a client and when they say “OK the project is yours” I disappear and Qun Dang takes over (Laughter)

JDS:That’s the person I need!

- Your first book focuses on context… many would argue that our generation follows Rem’s approach… he’s famous for stating ‘fuck context’ while a lot of our generation’s representatives, me included, seem rather obsessed by context… but maybe another understanding of it: it’s not anymore perceived as a sensitive set of values but rather as a tangible mass of opportunities and quantifiable qualities to extract projects from… how do you think context influences your work?

MAD: We see some contexts important including cultural context, social context, political context – it depends. Sometimes we’re very positive sometimes we’re very critical.

JDS: So you mean political implications are contextual?

MAD: Yes.

But back to China – later, when we did this Sino Steel International Plaza, people compared our projects with Rem’s CCTV. And we also worked with the same engineer from Arup. But in China there’s so many conflicts amongst people. Many people are poor and they don’t understand why you would spend so much money on this building. This ‘meaningless sculpture’. So as young Chinese architects we felt a certain pressure to do something quite cost-efficient. We took all this into account for this new project, so for Sino Steel we used this honey comb structure – we made it very simple and very cheap. The system is strong and very light at the same time.

JDS: What cladding is it?

MAD: Aluminium. All the meetings we had with the engineers we said; It’s very important to keep the budget low! That was the main challenge for this project.

JDS: Your project for the ERDOS MUSEUM could become the first BIG BUILT BLOB… do you realize that many have tried to accomplish such (maybe irrelevant) challenge without managing… sometimes I wonder where is the attraction for overly complicated and intricate geometries when bigger issues are at stake in architecture… could you tell me what’s your take on this?

MAD: When we did the competition, we of course didn’t know that we were going to really do the project. When we went there we faced this very stupid planning of the city. We thought it would be very dangerous to do a building in this city, we didn’t see any context. So when we did the design at that time I saw a science fiction movie. In this movie they took Fuller’s glass dome and covered the entire island of Manhattan. So that was the first impression for me, I should cover it. So we actually did something like that.. Then the government picked it and said that it looked like a stone. Because it’s a history museum stones mean a whole lot. It’s like a new version of a Mongolian house. People have different explanations.

JDS: But there was a symbolic that they read in it, which wasn’t your intention actually?

MAD: Right, most times it is like this.

JDS: and now it’s under construction and going well.

MAD: Yes.. so.. We’re doing the outer skin, which is quite difficult.. But as you said, we are not interested in complex geometry.

JDS: Yes, I just wanted to get your take on it, because it stands out in your body of work.

MAD: I would say I’m quite interested in the story behind the project – that’s why we have many different responses. Somehow we lose our own identity, in some level. You see two projects very differently. The challenge we face is so strong that you feel you have to do this for this project, and that for that project.

JDS: It’s good that everything is specific. OK, Mr. Ma - thank you.

MAD: sure.

CHECK OUT MORE AT MAD.COM