At 6:00 pm on September 5, 2013, New York local time, an oriental green building designed by Ma Yansong, which resembles mountains and flowing water, held a project opening ceremony in Times Square, New York. This urban complex, located by the lake in Chaoyang Park, Beijing, continues the path of "mountain and water city" that Ma Yansong has been pursuing. It is an interpretation of ancient Chinese natural philosophy in contemporary cities. In the central business district where extreme modernist buildings are rampant, Ma Yansong hopes to inject a vibrant landscape culture into new urban practice through the "Chaoyang Park Project".

Adjacent to the world's second largest urban park, Ma Yansong does not want the project to become the boundary between the park and the city like the surrounding square box towers. Instead, he wants to integrate the landscape of the building with the park through the design of building mountains and controlling water, so that it becomes an extension of nature to the city; at the same time, the natural elements of the park are introduced into the interior of the building complex to create a paradise in the city. The beginning of the design is to actively understand the plot as part of the park: borrowing the scenery of lakes and mountains, with high-rise office buildings as peaks, single-family office buildings as slopes, high-end office areas as ridges, and residential buildings as mountains; combining the elements of lakes, springs, forests, streams, valleys, stones, peaks and other elements of classical landscapes into one, outlining a futuristic urban landscape painting. The entire building complex is not "built", but seems to grow out of the environment, and reproduces the spatial cultural pattern of mountains and rivers. Being in it, people can not only feel the overall momentum of the mountains and rivers, but also feel the mood of one flower and one world in the subtle details.

This project is an ecological complex mainly for business offices and residences, but it has surpassed the conventional concept of green buildings and pioneered Chinese green buildings with "spiritual green". How to find new directions for contemporary architecture and cities from the traditional context is a question that Ma Yansong is very concerned about, and it is also a question of whether Chinese architecture can find a development path for future cities in its own way. An international city "modeling mountains and waters" should be guided by inheriting the spirit of traditional mountains and waters and regaining the traditional values ​​of nature, and then the innovation of architectural forms and even the transformation of urban forms. Based on this concept, Ma Yansong will continue to explore and practice urban mountains and waters.