Kin Li holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and joined MAD in May 2011. His highly sensitive touch in design and outstanding ability in understanding art, as well as skills applying various design software, provide him a solid base to fully understand and translate MAD’s design philosophy and language into complex 3-D models for teams to further develop. Kin served as the key designer and has participated in multiple iconic projects that synchronized MAD’s design philosophy, including Shenzhen Bay Culture Park, Quzhou Sports Park, Paris UNIC, Roma 71 Via Boncompagni, Anji Culture and Art Center, Hainan Science and Technology Museum, ZGC Forum Conference Center, Pingtan Art Museum, Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center, Chaoyang Park Plaza, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Jiaxing Civic Center, Lishui Airport, and Nanhai Art Center.

Beijing Office

Kin Li holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and joined MAD in May 2011. His highly sensitive touch in design and outstanding ability in understanding art, as well as skills applying various design software, provide him a solid base to fully understand and translate MAD’s design philosophy and language into complex 3-D models for teams to further develop. Kin served as the key designer and has participated in multiple iconic projects that synchronized MAD’s design philosophy, including Shenzhen Bay Culture Park, Quzhou Sports Park, Paris UNIC, Roma 71 Via Boncompagni, Anji Culture and Art Center, Hainan Science and Technology Museum, ZGC Forum Conference Center, Pingtan Art Museum, Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center, Chaoyang Park Plaza, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Jiaxing Civic Center, Lishui Airport, and Nanhai Art Center.

FENDI partnered with MAD for its Men’s Fall/Winter 2024–25 collection, continuing the House’s commitment to cross-disciplinary design. Initiated by Silvia Venturini Fendi, the collaboration brings architectural vision into fashion through a special edition of the Peekaboo ISeeU bag and a new FENDI MAD sneaker, both unveiled at the runway show on January 13, 2024, in Milan.

Under the creative direction of Venturini Fendi and Ma Yansong, the Peekaboo ISeeU bag is reimagined with sculptural aluminum components that reflect MAD’s curvilinear design language. The bag’s leather body is interrupted by wave-like aluminum forms, creating a ripple effect that introduces movement to the rigid structure. It is offered in two exclusive versions: black-on-black with blue metal insertions, and dove grey with gloss yellow accents.

The FENDI MAD sneaker echoes this architectural approach. Featuring an injection-molded sole and upper, the design includes two-tone bubble textures, metallic gradients, and a low, aerodynamic profile. Hidden stretch laces and a transparent bubble detail housing the FENDI logo emphasize the shoe’s seamless construction. The sneaker is available in three colorways that match the bags.

The collaboration blends fashion and architecture, translating MAD’s fluid forms into wearable objects that explore the intersection of material, structure, and movement.

Milan, Italy

Product

MAD x Fendi

The overall site has a footprint of 177.6-hectare, and a total building area of nearly 270,000 square meters. The terminal building was designed to add a human-scaled space with a calming presence to the Airport, both from a distance and from within. As visitors approach from the high-speed rail “Longjia” Station or the parking structure, they will be greeted by the terminal’s unique fan-shaped profile that resembles a floating feather — a nod to the airplanes that will be ascending and descending from its terminals throughout the day.

By adopting a three-fingered corridor structure surrounded by arcs, the terminal will maintain an overall harmonious layout in its connections to the T1 and T2 terminal areas while increasing the number of passenger seats near the aircrafts. Upon entrance, passengers will encounter a large, uninterrupted ground floor that provides direct access to the subway, automobile road and other methods of transportation connecting the terminal to the larger site.

The terminal also reflects the charm of Changchun as a "Garden City'' through the creation of what the design team has referred to as a "garden airport." The exterior space area is characterized by forests, lakes, meadows, and undulating terrain, while the indoor garden system combines trees, ground covers, and water features to create a "cold zone garden" that reflects the local climate.

Natural light is brought into the departure hall through the feather-shaped roof to create a bright and warm interior space that provides much-needed sunlight to the garden spaces within. The structural system continues the rhythm of the building's skin to express the logic of force transmission, which converges toward the center together with the skylight, guiding the direction of passengers naturally. The unique wooden ceiling also combines with the structure, skylight and sunlight to create a dynamic interior space.

The terminal’s approach to green design at an intimate scale is a response to the timeless human need for connection to human and plant-life alike; all within a shape as light and airy as a feather floating in the breeze.


Changchun, China

Infrastructure

Changchun Airport T3

Blueprint Beijing is the architectural section of the first Beijing Biennial, curated by Ma Yansong and co-organized by MAD. Opening in January 2023, the exhibition brings together architects, artists, and collectives from around the world to explore the future of Beijing through models, installations, photography, and film.

The exhibition juxtaposes historical visions of the city with speculative ideas that reimagine its future. It features 20 invited architects and artists presenting site-specific works, eight collectives showcasing archival research, and four Chinese science fiction films that offer alternative urban narratives. Through this diverse collection, Blueprint Beijing fosters dialogue between past and future, tradition and innovation, local and global perspectives.

The blueprint, both a record of history and a tool for imagining what lies ahead, serves as a central theme. Architecture shapes cities over time, and this exhibition highlights how visionary thinking can transform urban life. It examines the tensions between preservation and development, individual and collective identity, and the evolving role of architects in shaping culture.

The exhibition’s concluding video installation poses fundamental questions about architecture’s role in connecting history with the future. Blueprint Beijing is both a reflection and a provocation, offering an open-ended platform for international dialogue on the city’s future while inviting broader participation in shaping a more inclusive and livable Beijing.


Beijing, China

Exhibition

Blueprint Beijing

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

Xinhee Design Center in Xiamen is the headquarters for Xinhee Group and its six fashion brands. The building features a star-shaped layout with six branching wings connected by a central atrium, designed to encourage collaboration and openness across departments.

A semi-transparent PTFE skin wraps the structure, providing natural light, ventilation, and solar shading while giving the building a light, floating appearance. The atrium includes gardens, water features, and footbridges that double as fashion show catwalks, serving as both a public and functional core.

Raised on pilotis, the ground level forms a shaded garden accessible to the public. Living walls and green spaces extend throughout the building, merging work and nature.

Designed for Xiamen’s subtropical climate, the building promotes energy efficiency through passive ventilation, daylighting, and a breathable façade.

Xiamen, China

Office

Xinhee Design Center

The MAD Martian Collection is a limited-edition furniture series designed by Ma Yansong and released by Gallery ALL. Comprising five pieces a dining table, chaise lounge, candelabra, suspension lights, and console table the collection explores the intersection of science fiction and design through a futuristic, extraterrestrial lens.

The project began with a speculative question: what kind of environment would humans recreate once settled on Mars? The resulting forms, shaped over a two-year design process, reinterpret MAD’s Shanshui City philosophy within the context of a Martian future. Each piece reflects imagined landscapes beyond Earth, evoking natural forms in an unfamiliar world.

The collection draws inspiration from 20th-century science fiction, incorporating visual references from the Space Race era and early visions of life beyond Earth. This influence is visible in the sleek silhouettes and fluid geometries of the designs. Finished in a highly reflective metallic skin, the pieces appear adaptable, responsive, and detached from a specific time or place while still rooted in human memory and imagination.

Presented as part of Gallery ALL’s in-house commission program, the MAD Martian Collection is Ma Yansong’s first furniture series and debuted at Design Miami/Basel in 2017.


Miami, USA

LI Guangchong, Casey Kell, Dmitry Seregin, ZHU Yuhao, YAN Ran, Matthew Pugh, Marco Gastoldi 

Martian Collection

Old Beijing is composed of Hutongs, closely woven districts of communal courtyard homes. The basic elements of these districts are one-storey buildings, forming unique geometric patterns that are repeated at dense scales. This traditional urban fabric is increasingly under threat, however, forced to make way for the larger, monumental modern architecture of Beijing today.

The site of this project presents this issue in microcosm. Located near heart of old Beijing, close to historic monuments such as the Forbidden City and opposite the National Art Museum, the site presents a dual condition: small scale Hutongs remain at the Western edge, yet the Eastern edge is bounded by a modern axis of major roads, shopping malls and hotels.

In response to this dilemma, MAD proposes to create a building composed of many small Hutong-scale pieces that culminate in a large overall volume. This will be achieved by stacking different courtyard layers on top of one another, creating an ethereal, semi-solid piece of urban fabric, a vague geometric shape, which maintains the spatial relationships and hollow core of the courtyards.

This proposal extends the city fabric from small to large, stepping up between two scales, and providing a means to reconcile two sides of Beijing. The building is an urban instrument, representing Beijing’s new aspirations to be a forward looking city that also respects its past.



Culture

Felipe Escudero, Sophia Tang, Alan Kwan, Helen Yanyang Li, Liu Wei Wei, Harijs Alsin, Tang Liu, Stefan Ritter

Huangdu Art Center

East 34th our vision for a new type of New York City high-rise one that blends architecture and nature. Located near the Empire State Building, the tower challenges the rigid, power-driven expression of traditional skyscrapers. Instead of a sharp, imposing crown, the building features a deep-tinted glass curtain wall that gradually transitions into a transparent, fluid cap, dissolving into the sky.

The design rises from the Manhattan grid like an organic form, with soft, undulating surfaces that oppose the stacked plates of industrial-era towers. It introduces a more human and ecological language to the city’s dense modernist skyline.

At ground level, a commercial podium combines retail and public amenities, anchored by a multi-story atrium and vertical green wall offering moments of nature in the urban environment. Inside, double-height communal areas and shared amenities foster social connection and a sense of community among residents. These spaces reimagine vertical living as an immersive experience in “urban nature.”

‘East 34th’ proposes a gentler, more integrated future for high-density development one that shifts away from dominance and instead explores softness, connection, and coexistence with the surrounding city and environment.


New York City, USA

Residential

EAST 34th NYC

Located at the western edge of the Milano Innovation District (MIND), MoLo is our vision for a new type of urban gateway that integrates mobility infrastructure, public space, and sustainable design. In collaboration with Andrea Nonni, Open Project, and Progeca, we designed MoLo as a dynamic entry point for visitors arriving from the Rho municipality and surrounding areas.

The building combines transportation, education, and civic functions. At its core is a five-story parking structure with space for 1,500 vehicles. Surrounding it are laboratories, offices, commercial areas, and a supermarket. A central public tunnel connects both sides of the site and features a sculptural metal staircase and an open gallery that links to the nearby Rho-Arese Park.

Vegetation climbs the building’s façades, softening its appearance and improving air quality. The top surface houses more than 8,000 square meters of photovoltaic panels that supply renewable energy to the site and district. MoLo is constructed using a prefabricated concrete frame and follows the DfMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly) approach to reduce material waste and improve efficiency.

MoLo is not just a logistics facility it’s a public interface and a sustainable anchor for the future of urban mobility.


Transportation

Andrea d’Antrassi

Romina Carpentieri , Alessandro Fisalli, Paolo Pirri, Francesco Nardacci, Aldo Schirripa Spagnolo, Francesco Pasta, Anna Spaggiari, Elena Bellocchio

Architetto Andrea Nonni

Open Project srl

Progeca srl

MOLO

MAD, led by Ma Yansong, was commissioned by the Rotterdam, Netherlands-based Droom en Daad Foundation again, to make an initial design that turn the riverfront Provimi warehouse into a new cultural destination, the Danshuis (Dutch language for “the Dance House”). The project is intended to be equipped with professional dance studios, theaters, exhibition spaces to welcome dancers from all around the world to perform all kinds of dance freely.

Through this latest major cultural project, the Droom en Daad Foundation aims to make the city of Rotterdam a world leader through art and culture. The Danshuis transforms the old warehouse on the south bank of the Mas River Rotterdam into a symbol for freedom and pluralism. A vibrant place for the exchange of world dance culture, it will echo the adjacent "Fenix Museum of Migration," MAD’s first European cultural project, which together realize and strengthen the connection of the cultural fabric of the city.

In the Danshuis, people will feel the outdoors from within, the flow of dance and music in the process of watching and being watched, and the free transmission of art through tangible and intangible forms. "Dance is a flowing art of space. To emphasis that and respect the locality and history of the building, we decided to make minimum change to the original structure, just to add art installations in conversation with the environment” said Ma Yansong.“With this second commission from Droom en Daad Foundation, we hope to highlight Rotterdam's yearning for freedom and embracing of diverse global cultures. The Fenix Museum of Migration and the Danshuis are closely linked and will also look to the future together in Rotterdam's century-old port.”

