Focus on | Ma Yansong
Perugia 22/07/2025

Architecture
is not about power
it’s about emotion

On 22 November 2025, Perugia welcomed one of the keynote events leading up to Seed Festival 2026, featuring Ma Yansong—founder of MAD Architects, Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture, and one of the most influential voices in contemporary architecture.
During the event, Yansong presented his vision of Emotional Nature Architecture: an approach that moves beyond architecture as a purely technical discipline, reclaiming its role as a catalyst for relationships, emotion and a sense of belonging. For the Chinese architect, the cities of tomorrow should be designed not simply to function efficiently, but to reconnect people with a broader balance between humanity, nature and technology.


The initiative was promoted by the Guglielmo Giordano Foundation, curated by IN/ARCH – the Italian National Institute of Architecture, and developed in collaboration with Domus magazine.

 

We reimagine the built environment, creating spacesthat provoke thought, inspire creativity, and build deepconnections between peopleand their surroundings

Ma Yansong


Inspired by Nature,
driven by Innovation

Looking to the future begins with rediscovering the past. It means restoring the city’s ability to engage in dialogue with the landscape, allowing buildings and public spaces to evolve as living organisms rather than isolated objects. This philosophy runs through many of Yansong’s most celebrated works, from the YueCheng Courtyard Kindergarten in Beijing and the Fenix Museum of Migration in Rotterdam to the Shenzhen Bay Cultural Plaza, where architecture and nature merge into a single, continuous landscape.
For Ma Yansong, every design process should begin with one fundamental question: How will people feel? Space is never neutral. It shapes the way we live, connect with one another and imagine the future.

The event offered an early insight into one of the defining themes of Seed Festival 2026: placing humanity back at the centre of design by creating cities that do not erase the past, but regenerate it—transforming architecture into a bridge between people, the environment and culture.

How do you build a city that does not forget the mountains and the river from which it sprang?
The answer is Shanshui City – an architectural concept that reconnects urban life with the landscape, and progress with poetry.

Ma Yansong

Architect, Curator, Founder of MAD

Architect Ma Yansong (Beijing, 1975) is one of the defining voices of a new generation of Chinese architects. The first architect from China to design an internationally recognised landmark abroad, he envisions the future city as a balance between humanity, nature and technology, drawing on the Eastern tradition of harmony with the natural world.
In 2014, he won the international competition for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in the United States, becoming the first Chinese architect to lead a major international cultural commission. His most significant projects include the Fenix Museum in Rotterdam, the Tunnel of Light in Japan, Shenzhen Bay Cultural Park, Quzhou Sports Park, and the YueCheng Courtyard Kindergarten in China. Alongside his architectural practice, he explores the cultural dimension of architecture through exhibitions, publications and artistic work. In 2025, he served as curator of the China Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
Recognised by publications including ICON, Fast Company and TIME, as well as the World Economic Forum, Ma has received numerous international honours, among them the RIBA International Fellowship (2010) and the title of Young Global Leader (2014).
MAD


The Chinese Pavilion
for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale
"CO-EXIST"