BACK | MADA s.p.a.m. (Shanghai/Los Angeles)
MADA s.p.a.m.
For Building Asia Brick by Brick Photo by MADA s.p.a.m.
STATEMENT
While LEGO approaches the world from a fundamental perspective, the world itself is fragmented into many pieces. At what point do these two processes of creating an absolute understanding and a multiperspectival understanding of the world intersect or overlap? Where the first process provides a low resolution of operation based on mental associations of reality, the latter hybrid approach provides opportunities for hyper-reality. MADA's position between these two trends is "totality of modularity." Totality is unknown but always assumed. Totality is not reality, it is only assumed to approximate reality. Here, the assumed totality, ideality, is deducted by LEGO modules and proceeds to a final configuration.
ABOUT MADA S.P.A.M.
Born in 1965, Qingyun Ma graduated from the Architecture Department of Tsinghua University in Beijing with a Bachelors Degree in civil engineering. Following graduation, he attended the Graduate School of Fine Art, Department of Architecture, at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1995, Ma found MADA S.P.A.M., an architecture consulting company, in New York, and then moved to Shanghai in 2000. From that time, Ma has been active in both academic and practical fields. In 2007, he became dean of the School of Architecture, University of Southern California and will direct the Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism & Architecture.