Travelling Pavilion | Vertu Pavilion | Milan | Shanghai | Dubai | Beijing | London Mad Architects

The design concept of the travelling Pavilion for Vertu is to create an object that falls from the sky and land into the exhibition of objects. Through the full impact of its presents, it influence and alter the exhibition experience through space and time.

Vertu ‘s travelling exhibition is developed from natures phenomenon such as an explosion, collision, the twist bend elastic forces, it is the physical principles of natures forced visible from observation and research. The architecture is formally covered in sharp and broken shreds, an exploration of the residue let behind from nature’s formal transformation post collision. Vertu’s travelling pavilion architecture’s façade is a signifier of the split moment taken from nature’s explosion and fragmentation impact, realized in its formal state.............more

Museum Design | The China Wood Sculpture Museum | Harbin | China | MAD

Inspired by the unique local winter landscapes, the wood sculpture museum designed by MAD is a contrast between the elegance of nature and the speed of daily life. Its 200 meter long body is shaped as a frozen fluid that reflects and explores the relation between the building and the environment.

The museum linear organized interior is connected by a centralized entrance which both separates the two museums while simultaneously joining them, achieving a symbiotic relationship. The exhibition spaces are organized around 3 atriums with skylights that are designed to capture the northern low solar path. This fine balance between light and shadow guides visitors through the exhibitions, forming a poetic space which binds nature, art and people.

Hutong Bubble 32 | Hutong,Beijing,China | MAD

Year 2008
Location China
Typology Renovation
Scale 130 sqm
Status Complete


The Future Of The Hutongs

The Hutongs are historic poor neighbourhoods of central Beijing. Though the Hutongs delight tourists, life for the residents is hard: they have limited private space, and no indoor shower or toilet. At the same time as these residents are being re-housed on the outskirts of the city by the government, their historic homes are being occupied by the rich, whilst property developers tear down the old buildings and recreate them in ersatz form. Rather than allow the Hutongs to become historical theme parks, we propose a more forward looking solution. We will insert super modern interventions into the fabric of the Hutongs, either to provide new private facilities (showers, toilets, playrooms) for the current residents; or to create new spaces for the wealthy to live next door. Our proposal will mix current and future lifestyles into the historic fabric. 2050 Hutongs will value the lives of the people who live in the buildings, rather than just the buildings themselves.

Text and images from MAD

Superstar-A Mobile China Town |11th Venice Biennale of Architecture | MAD

2008
'Uneternal City'
11th Venice Biennale of Architecture
Acrylic, Stainless Steel
5200 (L) x 4800 (W) x 5000 (H) (mm)

'Superstar: A Mobile China Town’, was featured in the exhibition ‘Uneternal City’ of the 11^th Venice Biennale in 2008. The exhibition, curated by Aaron Betsky, invited 12 young global architects to suggest interventions into an anonymous suburban area of Rome, which could exploit and represent the new spaces and urban fabrics of a ‘Rome of the future’. The project was shown in the Arsenale, Venice, from 14^th September to 23^rd November 2008.

MAD's proposal, 'The Superstar', takes the form of a New China Town.

Along with shopping malls, petrol stations and branches of McDonalds, the old China Town renders all of our cities boring and alike. It is nothing more than restaurant streets and fake traditional buildings representing a kitsch image of contemporary China, with no real life inside. It is a historical theme park that poisons the urban space. There must be a shock therapy to remedy this situation.

Superstar: A Mobile China Town is MAD's response to the redundant and increasingly out-of-date nature of the contemporary Chinatown. Rather than a sloppy patchwork of poor construction and nostalgia, the Superstar is a fully integrated, coherent, and above all modern upgrade of the 20th century Chinatown model. It’s a place to enjoy, to consume Chinese food, quality goods and cultural events; it’s a place to create and to produce, where citizens can use workshops to study, design and realize their ideas.

Equally important to what this neo-community contains is how it operates. Superstar: A Mobile China Town is a benevolent virus that releases unknown energy in between unprincipled changes and principled steadiness. It can land at every corner of the world, exchanging the new Chinese energy with the environment where it stays. It’s self-sustaining: it grows its own food, requires no resources from the host city, and recycles all of its waste. And it’s a living place, with authentic Chinese nature, health resorts, sports facilities and drinking water lakes. There’s even a digital cemetery, to remember the dead. The Superstar is a dream that’s home to 15,000 people: there is no hierarchy, no hyponymy, but a fusion of technology and nature, future and humanity.

The Superstar’s first destination will be the periphery of Rome. The Superstar will provide an unexpected, ever-changing future imbedded in the Eternal past.

Welcome to the Superstar, the China Town of today.

Text and images from : MAD

More exhibition Structures:

Exhibition Structures 1

Exhibition Structures 2

Al Rostamini Headquarters, Dubai | MAD

Architects: MAD
Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Director in Charge: Ma Yansong, Dang Qun
Site Area: 4,392 sqm
Constructed Area: 50,000 sqm
Program: Office Headquarters
Client: Al Rostamini Group Ltd
Images: MAD
Via

Hong Luo Club House / MAD-Beijing, China

more clubhouse designs here
Architects: MAD Office
Location: Beijing, China
Construction year: 2006
Constructed Area: 487.2 sqm
Interior Area: 189.7 sqm
Project Directors: Yansong Ma, Yosuke Hayano
Project Architect: Florian Pucher
Design team: Shen Jun, Christian Taubert, Marco Zuttioni, Yu Kui
Associate Architects & Engineers: IDEA Design Studio
Photographs: Shu He
Via