The 2012 Beijing Design Forum (co-organized with the New York Times Chinese website) was held at the Park Hyatt Hotel on September 29. Ma Yansong, as one of the eight speakers, gave a speech titled "Protecting the Future" and had a dialogue with Taiwanese architect Xie Yingjun on the theme of "Ancient Building Preservation".

Speech topic: Protect the future

Speech summary: The large-scale urbanization process in contemporary China has neglected nature, history and humanities, which has caused us to misunderstand that the modernization process is a contradiction with the natural and cultural environment on which we depend for survival. This makes us always blame or hurt the other side when pursuing one aspect. Ma Yansong tries to show a future where imagination and history coexist by telling three urban architecture projects of MAD. These research and renovation projects in the old city of Beijing, Rome and Guiyang respectively give different attitudes to new buildings in different historical contexts. They try to find opportunities to link history and the future in the dialogue with the past.