In a traditional Japanese or Chinese garden, it's not only about the building or temple but about the whole setup - the structure, the landscape, the light, the plants, the water. The whole experience that makes your life there so beautiful.
We try to turn buildings into landscapes - defying the idea of modernism which sees nature and buildings as two distinct elements.
The difficulty with big cities does not lie in skyscrapers or high-rises per se; rather, it is the values concealed within those buildings which lead to the loss of our humanity and our sense of spiritual emptiness.
People love to go closer to nature and other people, so we need to create environments that let people have these emotional connections.
China has some cities, traditional cities, with a long history. They are so beautiful, and they were planned so smartly. I call them gardens on the city scale. For example, Beijing has mountains, waters, lakes, bridges, towers. It was a very poetic city.
Architecture is about experience: not only visual but also what you can touch, what you can feel.
There must be a way to combine the high rise and high-density environment with nature. Maybe we can have our gardens in the sky.
We need to enter a new era to make nature and humans more emotionally connected in modern cities.
Chaoyang Park Plaza is about how to carry the traditional culture into a new format in modern architecture. Instead of building a boundary between the city and the park, I tried to design this building to emerge from the natural landscape.
'Shan shui' you can literally translate as 'mountain and water.' In traditional Chinese culture, there are a lot of paintings about shan shui, but now we're talking about a shan-shui city.
I grew up in the old neighborhood of Beijing where you had a courtyard and trees. Actually, the whole of Beijing was a garden - the Forbidden City - and the lakes and gardens in the city center were all artificial.
Architecture is a special kind of career that showcases the accumulations of culture, time, and history.
Sometimes I sketch and then scan my sketch directly to make the curves more freehand. I don't want to make perfect industrial curves.
In China, it's very easy to make architecture special because anything you design will look different, as most parts of the city are very similar. They make so many massive residential buildings.
Instead of making grand structures and beautiful buildings, we should focus on the environment and the urban space and how you encourage people to live.
A lot of ancient poetry sees in nature a reflection of human emotions, and in a post-industrialized era, once people have become more aware of the necessity of a more harmonious relation between man and nature, we need to build cities which can connect with human spiritual needs instead of being merely functional.
It's very strange: if you're a philosopher or musician or an artist, people automatically believe you can see the future. Even if they don't like you, they accept your vision as an individual.
When you look at classical structures, they're often linked to literature, music, or a poem. They were constructed by master builders, which means it's not something standard that you can copy.
China is a place where you can experience two very contrasting things coexisting. First, the rich, cultural history of the country - and, second, rapid urbanization.
My first impression of Beverly Hills was that it had a landscape of small houses built by famous architects, so I didn't want to make a big block or sculpture here; I wanted to make a community rooted to the place.
