Flora Lee, graduated from School of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, joined MAD in 2008. She is an exceptional project manager with a multifaceted management capability that ranges from conceptual design to project coordination and communication with clients and developers. She has helped develop and realize a number of MAD’s major international projects, including: Gardenhouse, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, Campinas Art Gallery of Brazil, East 34th in NYC, Paris UNIC and the Conrad Hotel in Beijing.

Los Angeles Office

Flora Lee, graduated from School of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, joined MAD in 2008. She is an exceptional project manager with a multifaceted management capability that ranges from conceptual design to project coordination and communication with clients and developers. She has helped develop and realize a number of MAD’s major international projects, including: Gardenhouse, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, Campinas Art Gallery of Brazil, East 34th in NYC, Paris UNIC   and the Conrad Hotel in Beijing. 

Fifth Ring is an immersive installation created for Milan Design Week 2018, set within the courtyard of the historic Seminario Arcivescovile. Invited by INTERNI, the project reinterprets the traditional courtyard through a single architectural gesture a suspended illuminated ring that transforms the spatial experience.

The circular form contrasts with the square geometry of the 16th-century courtyard, establishing a new spatial order that challenges classical symmetry. Viewed from above, the ring becomes a fifth façade. From the ground, it frames the sky, redirecting the viewer’s attention upward and creating a moment of reflection and pause within the dense urban fabric.

Reflecting pools on the ground mirror the sky and the ring, forming a visual connection between the earth and the atmosphere. The result is a layered, open environment where light, water, and architecture interact to suggest a space beyond the visible.

Fifth Ring explores the relationship between architecture, perception, and the unknown. By inserting a minimal but impactful intervention into a historical context, the project encourages a renewed dialogue between human presence and the infinite. It serves as a temporary shift in perception, transforming a static space into one that feels expansive, immersive, and connected to a larger, cosmic dimension.


Milan, Italy

Installation 

Fifth Ring

Sustainable Energy
MAD’s scheme harnesses solar and wind energies to power the HyperloopTT system. The transportation tunnels are outfitted with bendable solar panel skin modules that are used to power the Hyperloop itself, along with LEDs installed along its surface that function as interactive information boards. Bladeless wind turbine forests positioned at certain sections of the HyperloopTT system will harness the vorticity of the wind, creating a main source of power for the transportation network, lowering overall energy costs.

Small Footprint
The pylon design minimizes the system’s physical footprint by lifting its functions almost 7 meters above ground. This eliminates the possibility of collision with road traffic, which in turn decreases the cost of land acquisition. It is composed of a single-mold fiberglass structure, proving its efficiency in both its development and usage.

Urban Farming
Sustainability is further emphasized through urban farming opportunities. The base of each pylon is conceived to host crop-growing facilities that encourage urban farming. The light energy sourced from the solar-powered LEDs allows the plants to be self-sustainable, forming a friendly, green environment – a truly organic infrastructure.

Worldwide

Transportation

Matthew Pugh, Wang Tao, Chris Nolop,  Nathan Kiatkulpiboone

HyperloopTT

Mirage is our proposal for the renovation of Montparnasse Tower in Paris. Designed by Ma Yansong, the scheme reimagines the controversial skyscraper often criticized as the “scar of Paris” as a large-scale optical installation that reflects its surroundings poetically and unexpectedly.

Completed in 1973, Montparnasse Tower stands as one of Paris’ tallest structures, but its imposing black form has long been seen as out of place within the city’s classical landscape. Our concept uses angled glass panels to create a concave façade that transforms the tower into a city-scale mirror.

The design reflects Paris’ rooftops and skyline onto the upper portion of the tower, while the sky appears mirrored on the lower section, blurring the boundary between architecture and atmosphere. From certain angles, iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower appear upside down in the tower’s reflection, creating a surreal and dreamlike effect.

Rather than erasing history, Mirage offers a new lens to interpret the past. Our approach is not to conceal the building’s presence but to soften its impact through reflection, light, and illusion inviting viewers to reconsider how architecture can engage with memory, scale, and its urban context.

Paris, France

Adaptive Reuse

Mirage - Montparnasse Tower

In Feelings are facts (2010), Olafur Eliasson and Ma Yansong challenge our everyday patterns of spatial orientation. Vision functions as our primary, default sense for navigation, but this expansive installation induces initial insecurity in its visitors by radically reducing visibility, thereby suggesting the need to invent new models for perception. Basing this project on a series of previous experiments with atmospheric density, Eliasson introduces condensed banks of artificially produced fog into the gallery, whose dimensions have been further altered by substantially lowering the ceiling and constructing an inclined wooden floor. Hundreds of fluorescent lights are installed in the ceiling as a grid of red, green, and blue zones. By permeating the fog, these lights create coloured walk-through spaces that, in Eliasson's words, function to "make the volume of the space explicit." The coloured zones introduce a scale of measurement in the gallery, their varying size and organization referencing urban planning grids. At each colour boundary, two hues blend to create transitional slivers of cyan, magenta, and yellow. Walking through the dense, illuminated atmosphere, visitors can navigate by using this intuitive colour atlas. Another means of navigation is the floor construction. Whereas movement on a plane sur face can be effortlessly accomplished, the sloping floor challenges visitors to readjust their balance, constantly having to shift their weight and body posture to counterbalance the inclination. This fact emphasizes the crucial role of the moving body in our perception of our surroundings. The further visitors venture into the space, the steeper the floor gets, until the point where it becomes a wave-like curved wall. Since the ceiling imitates this construction, a seemingly boundless space is discerned above.

Olafur Eliasson


Space and light bring life into existence. There is no space, unless given light and boundary. Space has never existed, but rather exists only in the specific feelings it induces. Space in reality, exists only in sensuality. With expanding desire, everything is managed with utmost efficiency. Our feelings and sensibilities are seeing facts in the context of habituated life. Not until shutting our eyes, can we feel the world from within, space and light will touch your soul.

Ma Yansong

Beijing, China

Jérôme Sans, Guo Xiaoyan

Olafur Eliasson & Ma Yansong—Feelings are facts

Embedded within Harbin’s wetlands, Harbin Opera House is an abstraction of its natural surroundings. Inspired by the powerful aura of the Songhua River, it responds to the force and spirit of the northern Chinese city’s untamed wilderness, frigid climate, and rich musical history.

The building references the sinuous landscape that surrounds it, as if it has been sculpted by wind and water. Emphasizing public interaction and participation, the opera house welcomes both ticketholders and the public to explore pathways carved into its facade and ascend the building as if traversing the local topography. The grand theater emulates a wooden block that has been delicately eroded away. The presence of nature is carried out inside through a subtle skylight that visually connects the audience to the exterior, and the passing of time.


Harbin, China

Culture

Jordan Kanter, Daniel Gillen, Bas van Wylick, Liu Huiying, Fu Changrui, Zhao Wei, Kin Li ,Zheng Fang, Julian Sattler, Jackob Beer, J Travis Russett, Sohith Perera, Colby Thomas Suter, Yu Kui, Philippe Brysse, Huang Wei, Flora Lee, Wang Wei, Xie Yibang, Lyo Hengliu, Alexander Cornelius, Alex Gornelius, Mao Beihong, Gianantonio Bongiorno, Jei Kim, Chen Yuanyu, Yu Haochen, Qin Lichao, Pil-Sun Ham, Mingyu Seol, Lin Guomin, Zhang Haixia, Li Guangchong, Wilson Wu, Ma Ning, Davide Signorato, Nick Tran, Xiang Ling, Gustavo Alfred Van Staveren, Yang Jie

Harbin Songbei Investment and Development Group Co., Ltd.

Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD) Institute No.3

Inhabit Group, China Jingye Engineering Co., Ltd.

Gehry Technologies Co., Ltd.

Beijing Turenscape Institute

MAD, Shenzhen Keyuan Construction Group Co., Ltd.

Harbin Weimeiyuan Decoration Design Co., Ltd.

Acoustic and Theater Special Design & Research Studio of East China Architectural Design & Research Institute (ECADI)

China International Engineering Design & Consult Co., Ltd.

Beijing New Era Architectural Design Ltd.

Shenzhen Freesigns Signage Co., Ltd.

Harbin Opera House

The “Marilyn,” is a door handle designed in collaboration with Olivari for Milan Design Week. Inspired by our “Absolute Towers” in Mississauga nicknamed the “Marilyn Monroe Towers” for their soft, curving silhouette the handle echoes the same fluid movement in miniature.

The door handle represents the first point of physical connection between a person and a space. With this in mind, “Marilyn” was designed to feel intuitive and natural from the moment of touch. Its sinuous form gently twists, referencing the continuous rotation of the towers while providing a smooth, ergonomic experience.

The horizontal curve fits easily into the palm, while the vertical surface invites the thumb to rest comfortably, offering a quiet but meaningful interaction with form.


Product

Li Guangchong, Sean Tan, Hiroki Fujino

Olivari

Marilyn Handle

Floating Island is a vision for the World Trade Center site a horizontal, floating structure that challenges the verticality of traditional skyscrapers. Instead of a towering office block, the project proposes a suspended landscape that connects surrounding buildings while opening the ground to public life.

Designed for the digital era, it condenses business functions meeting spaces, media centers, and transport hubs into a compact core. Around it, public programs such as cinemas, parks, restaurants, and a man-made lake create a diverse, accessible urban environment.

By merging architecture with landscape, Floating Island encourages horizontal flow and social interaction, breaking the isolation of high-rise towers. It reimagines the WTC not as a symbol, but as a space for civic renewal where development becomes the memorial.


New York City, USA

Rebuilt World Trade Center

A sculpture to sit on. A frozen form of space in continuous movement. A chair with a poetic focus on motion and fluidity. It is like an object, leaving a trace of its acceleration and strength. Aerodynamic, sleek and charismatic. The hollow metal supporting legs place the sculpture in a state of equilibrium with strength. The armrests create a leaning-forward posture with speed through simple curvatures. The chair incorporates movement, energy and spatial changes into its form.

Rome, Italy

Dynamik Chair

The Centre Pompidou in Paris hosts a year-long exhibition of MAD in France. ‘MAD X’ showcases ten of MAD’s most significant projects to date. “While ‘X’ represents the ten projects that are on show, it also has another meaning – ‘X’ also signifies the ‘unknown’,” says Ma Yansong, Founder and Principal Partner of MAD. “With ‘X,’ I hope to express my desire for exploring uncharted territory, which I believe is more important than reiterating the past.” The permanent collection exhibition exemplifies the evolution of MAD’s architectural practice and design philosophy since its establishment in 2004, led by Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, and Yosuke Hayano.

Exhibition

Tammy Xie, Andrea Chin, Esther Greslin, Ma Yue, Li Ran

MAD X - Centre Pompidou

Tencent’s Shenzhen headquarters, Lot 04 East, is designed as a forward-thinking, low-carbon technology campus that prioritizes sustainability, accessibility, and human-centered design. The project introduces a series of biomorphic office towers and interconnected structures that seamlessly integrate with the surrounding landscape, fostering a dynamic and collaborative environment.

The design creates a fluid connection between architecture and nature, with elevated ground floors that enhance openness and transparency. Expansive glass facades blur the boundary between indoor and outdoor spaces, encouraging natural light, social interaction, and engagement with the surrounding environment. The site is further enriched by green spaces, pedestrian-friendly zones, and multi-level public areas that enhance connectivity and well-being.

With a focus on ecological responsibility, the project balances innovation with environmental consciousness, setting a new standard for sustainable urban development. Positioned at the intersection of technology and design, Tencent’s headquarters reimagines the modern workplace as a vibrant, interconnected hub for collaboration and creativity.


Shenzhen, China

Mixed Use

Antoine Muller, Wang Shuobin, Ma Yiran, Yin Jianfeng, Claudia Hertrich, Jose Maria Urbiola, Reinier Simons, Fu Xiaoyi, Zhu Yuhao, Alan Rodríguez Carrillo, Zhou Haimeng, Li Hui

Liu Hailun, Fu Xiaoyi, Zeng Hantao, Sun Yingna, Liu Zifan, Song Minzhe, Zhao Guijia, Jose Maria Urbiola, Tan Miao, Rozita Kashirtseva, Li Jiaqi, Antoine Muller, Alan Rodríguez Carrillo, Yu Lin, Feng Xuhui, Zhang Kai, Wu Qiaoling, Yang Wenzhi, Chen Hongbin, Hou Jinghui, Sun Feifei, Wang Ruipeng, Yoshio Fukumori, Li Lingfeng, Yin Jianfeng, Zhou Qinyuan, Cheng Xiangju, Du Jie, Na Kyung Eun

Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

Shenzhen General Institute of Architectural Design And Research Co., Ltd.

China Construction 4th Engineering Bureau 6th Corp., Limited

Arcadis Shanghai Limited

Meinhardt (Shenzhen) Ltd.

SuP Ingenieure GmbH, Shenzhen Fangda Building Technology Group Co., Ltd., China Construction Buer Curtain Wall & Decoration Co., Ltd.

MAD, Woods Bagot Architectural Design Consultants (Beijing) Co Ltd., Shenzhen Jiang & Associates Creative Design, China Academy of Building Research

Lighting Planners Associates Inc. & Lighting Planners Associates (S) Pte. Ltd., China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (CAUPD)