MAD Library

Fish Tank

Fish Tank brings together a decade of Ma Yansong’s essays and reflections, offering insight into his evolving artistic and spiritual thinking while examining the dynamic relationship between architecture and urban life framed by the metaphor of the city as a "fish tank," where people both shape and are shaped by their environment; as part of the Architectural World Series, Volume 2, the book also contextualizes Ma’s work within broader contemporary Chinese architectural discourse and highlights the contributions of a new generation of Chinese architects.

Shanshui City

Shanshui City is an important turning point for Ma Yansong’s over ten years of architectural practice and theory; this abbreviated manifesto on Shanshui philosophy expands beyond nature and captures the individual emotional response to the surrounding world.

Bright City

Bright City presents MAD’s design philosophy through a dialogue-driven format that explores the merging of nature and architecture, revealing Ma Yansong’s perspective on urbanism and design through a series of cultural, architectural, and existential questions rooted in his early experiences in old Beijing and reflecting the core attitude that shapes MAD’s work.

MAD Dinner

MAD DINNER is the first book by MAD. Organized around the metaphor of dinner table conversation, the book is a collection of ideas and opinions about topics ranging from politics to ecology to fame to the future.

MA YANSONG: From (Global) Modernity to (Local) Tradition

Ma Yansong, published by Actar and Museo ICO, accompanies the Madrid exhibition of the same name and offers a curated look at the architect’s global work over the past eight years—featuring essays, exhibition imagery, and critical reflections, including an analysis by Menene Gras that situates Ma’s architecture within the classical Chinese relationship between nature and the city, revealing how his work reinterprets this tradition in a contemporary, visionary context.

Tunnel of Light

"Tunnel of Light", authored by Ma Yansong, was published in Chinese by CITIC Press Group, featuring a foreword by Fram Kitagawa and an afterword by renowned architecture critic Fang Zhenning. In 2018, Ma Yansong was invited to participate in the 7th Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in Japan, where they created the artwork "Tunnel of Light." In 2022, MAD carried out further renovations to part of the space. The book "Tunnel of Light" documents the design background, concept, construction process, behind-the-scenes stories, and in-depth interviews related to this artistic masterpiece. It includes over 120 rare images, such as hand-drawn sketches, initial renderings, technical drawings, and on-site construction photos, offering a comprehensive look at how the "Tunnel of Light" revitalized Kiyotsu Gorge and breathed new life into the Echigo-Tsumari region.

MAD X

MAD X presents a visual and conceptual survey of ten defining MAD projects from 2005 to 2021 spanning Canada, China, Japan, the U.S., and France showcasing works like the Absolute Towers, Harbin Opera House, and Lucas Museum through photomontages, models, sketches, and essays that illustrate Ma Yansong’s design philosophy rooted in emotion, nature, and the human experience while marking a ten-year milestone and signaling an ongoing pursuit of future urban forms that deepen the connection between people, culture, and place.

MAD Works

MAD Works, published by Phaidon, offers the first comprehensive monograph on MAD Architects, documenting their emergence over the past 15 years as a leading voice in contemporary Chinese architecture through a thematic presentation of built and unbuilt projects including museums, theaters, residences, urban plans, and neighborhood renovations illustrated with over 300 images that reveal MAD’s core pursuit: architecture that balances humanity, emotion, and the urban environment across a global portfolio.

MAD Rhapsody

With photographs, drawings, and models, the book the firm’s second monograph highlights 23 projects from 2004 to today, both built and in-process, and spanning civic, mixed-use, residential, and commercial buildings, as well as art installations.

Twenty Cities

In this semi-autobiographical follow-up to Shanshui City, Ma Yansong reflects on twenty cities Beijing, New York, Barcelona, Santiago, Paris, Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Harbin, Shenzhen, Rome, Chicago, San Francisco, Tokyo, Ordos, Huangshan, Taiping Lake, Jiaxing, Qinhuangdao, Nanjing, and Yiwu tracing how personal memories, cultural impressions, and architectural practices across these places have shaped his belief in architecture as a medium that connects people, emotion, society, and the evolving meaning of cities.

Tunnel of Light (International Edition)

Published in Japanese and English by Modern Planning Office Co., Ltd., the International Edition of Tunnel of Light documents MAD’s transformation of the 750-meter Kiyotsu Gorge Tunnel—first designed for the 2018 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and later updated in 2022—featuring four immersive viewing platforms whose spatial and lighting designs blur the line between reality and dream, while also revitalizing the local economy, reversing depopulation trends, and earning praise from leading figures like Fram Kitagawa and Fang Zhenning for its seamless spatial continuity and poetic impact.