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Lucy in the sky with diamonds…

Didn’t Superman fly to earth in that thing?

“Beijing-based architects MAD have designed a conceptual, star-shaped, mobile Chinatown.”

have they? it looks like they designed a big shape?

cease to draw attention and make things seriously. unfortunate

H:ORRIBLE

Dreck.

I cant decide if this is complete cynicism or great inventive, both lack of judgement whatsoever. Architecture should be the materialization of the spirit of our time, is this it?
To get a better glance of how stupidity can be profitable, take a look at the book.

Gorgeous, evocative imagery.

Is MAD the Archigram of this generation ?

this is idiotic.

oh! help! my stomach hurts from laughing!

“Beijing-based architects MAD have designed a conceptual, star-shaped, mobile Chinatown.”

i want to spit at my monitor. they owe me 3 minutes of my life i wasted reading this trash.

fits perfectly in Nakheel, Dubai…

Next a big rubber ball will then fall from the sky and then bounce up again. The spiky glass jack will be immediately picked up and relocated before that ball hits the ground again.

loke tyler and alex,

you’re going to have to back up your cynicism with some intellect or you should just go back to looking at porn and … hey, aren’t their some steel shop drawings to be marked up for that office job in the burbs ?

If you can’t see the vision, than don’t critique the visionary.

Sorry this looks just horrible … and plain stupid !

maybe they forgot to tell you to change career ..

btw i think some architects just watch to much sience fiction and then think’ heh, what ever lets make it real’ .. and a lot of words here .. recycling, selfsuporting? what ever they dont know even what this really means for this object..

looks more like a mobile christkindlesmarkt
happy x-mas all over the world…

HAHA - I LOOOVE IT!

and i like the fact that this is published on the sept 11.

MAD did a project on the new WTC years ago and it was out there.

idiotic yes.

if you compare them with Mahattan, you see that the thing is too small to be a city. A film generation, sweet image, but not architecture neither urban plan, nor spatial idea. No pragmatism, no practicality, no idea on how to build this with many parties. It can only be done by a giant contral power, theus only in china you can do this, yet again, in china there is no need to see any more stars, as they keep on filling up pur sky with their industrial smogs. Please stop, keep it in the imagination, grow up.

definitely would like to see some sections and plans, programmatic distribution

I am annoyed!

Really annoyed!

Stop spending your (grandparents hard earned) inheritance on nothing and do

some work! Stop exploiting the cheap Chinese workforce also.

I am mad!

Is this April fool ?

I hate to be pragmatic but how ‘on earth’ would this thing ever be mobile? Does it fly off to the next destination?

no comment, but check Heatherwicks sculpture.
Scale it an here we go a MAD chinatown.
That’s what is called sustainable ‘design’?

welcome the rolling star.

With this, china can take over the world..

Zaha’s probably jealous.

I want a video demonstration of this thing rolling around, powered by rice, impaling skyscrapers katamari-style. Alternatively, get a few of these together with a giant rubber ball.

Well, it’s a mad, MAD world!

grotesque!

GENE PARMESAN! AAAH! HE GETS ME EVERY TIME!

hahah this is so great
utterly ridiculous
how is it mobile?
is that model to any scale whatsoever
doesn’t look city sized
what method of locamotion wouldn’t cause irreversible damage to an object of that scale?
i like the focus on shopping in the youtube video…
shopping with definitely help us - of course buying things of luxury nature made of hemp - that is the best suggestion ever - a keen mix of contempt for the less fortunate and a mind bogglingly shallow understanding of environmental issues…naturally

i love the image tho looks great….quite battlestar galactica!
tho i think the basestars in that are much more attractive

why would being mobile help a city? what sort of economic situation would breed that as a preferable response?

if you’ve had a whole office working on this- what have you actually been doing?
love the giant model

but what the hell does it mean that your office is dealing with the ‘problem of chinese cutlure’ what problem is that?!
china’s importing western expertise…learning from it - then chucking it out - getting the knowledge - making their own professional economy! whats wrong with that?

what are you architects going to solve?!?! have you ever solved anything?

it’s really MAD! haha , but then again its conceptual,so great work and would like to see further development on the plans.

Why is everybody so mad at MAD? If they like, they have every right to make nice, useless renderings of nothingness. What annoys me far more is that this gets published. As the editor of a weblog/magazine/newspaper, you should just send this to the trash bin of your mailbox.

Remember China has star on her national flag?

seriously, watch the video!
i like the project for being a “future concept proposal” .. not a thing that will be build in the next couple of years. And I’m sure, once you can build these cantilevers and let it really be self sufficient .. moving the big thing will be easy! You should see it as demands for the future development of living, packed in a weird shape.
But I really hope once such a thing is feasable, all the national pathos will be outdated … then, let it be A Mobile Universaltown

Once apon a time there was a monstr trolling around the city and while the monster is trolling destroyed the small houses, killed children, destroyed streets, crashed the historical heritages, castles, parliament of a country… The monster refused to pay respect as the monster insisted that he does no belong to anywhere, no country therefore voiding the social duty, sense of solidarity, responsibility to their immediate suroundings… Please ….

There is nothing visionary about this project. No inteligence, no inventiveness, uncritical, irrelevant. Only nice renderings.

Well done Aaron Betsky!

woow

wow, after watching the video…..

quite a science fiction novel, the story of this building.

a scary one. One that speaks about a future of massive density, ultimate survellance, and supreme control over our environment and lives.

nevermind the fact that this object as a piece of moveable architecture is totally unrealizable in with our current technological capabilities.

this concept is very poorly thought out.

It echos the dogma that guides and binds much of contemporary western influenced chinese society.

Of course, the current approach to control, consumption and ambitous growth leads to prosperity in economy and domintation in many fields of our confused global society, but…

It seems that it leads human civilization on a direct course toward what we are realizing as the destruction of our planet, and or the destruction of relationship to the planet and the nature of our being as we have known it. The latter having the possibilty of being positive.

It brings up interesting questions, but not questions that haven’t already been adressed for at least a century.

“It’s self-sustaining: it grows its own food, requires no resources from the host city, and recycles all of its waste.”

Of course it does! It’s a totally inscrutable, scale-less spiky thing. It can, in theory, do anything. But so can a giant glass turd or a mandarin. Actually, I think a mandarin would be an excellent symbol for the revival of Chinatowns worldwide.

Memo to MAD’s publicist: love your work.

It looks ridiculously overwhelming.

Wow, architectural jacks.

Next all we need is architectural pick-up-sticks, no wait, we had that with MVRDV.

city or kidney stone?

What’s next? the thingy with rocket engine on it and flyingto the space to discover new enterprise and hitting new starwars? I am sure this is the case.

excellent work.

a contemporary interpretation of super-studio.

I come from China, but I have to say…terrible! Such kind of thing has nothing to do with the future or eco! It belongs to the last century!

i dont even want to see it in future.. but then im stuck cause it will fly everywhere aaaaahhhhhh noooooo …

This worse than a kick in the balls !

…They laughed a Kurokawa too…

Did you guys ever consider that Ma Yansong is trying to piss you off, exactly as he has done, in order to force you to consider certain absurdities?

I think this work is 100% deliberate in it’s shortcomings.

excellent work? this is horrible… a mobile town? this piece of junk would never work

and NO!.. MAD is not the archigram of ours or any generation… they actually had some theoretical substance, this guys well.. they do create polemic lets give them that much.

I’m pretty sure MAD people are laughing their asses of regarding the comments on this website.

You take yourselves very seriously! Open up your minds, and take a mental notice of this: this was a prank by MAD!

By the way, I’m sooooo proud that I was the first one to comment on this outstanding trash!

a “good” post for 9-11

Brilliant, brilliant, intriguing concept

Brilliant imagery

doesnt match when you put concept next to the imagery.

stop bad hollywood remakes! please!

well they are MAD

yeah, are they a rendering studio or an architecture studio…
who lets these people through?

Com’on guys. Dont be that serious! Yes, it is a stupid design, but who cares. No one is going to build it anyway. To an architecture frim, this is a good strategy to draw public’s attention, good or bad? whatever, they dont care, and do you care? but you are going to remember the name MAD. Even in this blog, 50 reply is not too bad, isn’t it? Just for fun, have a good weekend!

entirely retarded.

critical cow: I do not look at whether this is because I am realy critic, as this subject can be taken into account as a vision for the future when it refuses to all current and does not respond to anything?. as this subject can be taken into account when it is a propaganda tool for a study without ideas? and how that object can be considered a work of architecture when as seen in the photos this post in any side without taking into account many factors?
….therefore you should help you out the name of cow and put idiot who was surprised with any crap!

“Moving around the world, the mobile town would produce…”

… a lot of cheap products, that’s for sure.

Like every thing they do, 40 years late and knocked off.

Utterly unconvincing, no matter how sexy the graphical representation.
There is no depth or resolution of the design/concept, and almost no reason for the placement/distribution of program. And being ethnically Chinese myself, I cannot see an iota of the so-called “Chineseness” in the project. Come on MAD, stop media blitzing this crap in our faces and get down to REAL work.

nope this is stupid. any comparisons to the genius and provactive work of the 60s and 70s is unfounded. this doesnt have any of the wit, rigour or intellegence of those projects. it is just lazy and for it to get any publicity only serves to legitimise this crap.

In Bruxell you have one that is even more exciting and that was almost rubbished. No newness in this project. This much we know, any projective future image of the past never came true. We know that future is not there.

made me sick again

on One …

hey, do you have any link to that project you mentioned?

this is the most shitty project i’ve ever seen

YUCK

HATE IT SO MUCH

Ripping off Archigram from 40 years ago is not visionary.

“One” is right. This has already been done in Brussels.

Doesn’t that make it a double rip off?

i´m ordering one from mad to put on my backyard to store the gardening utensils, i hope that the price is affordable.

if this piece of **** landed on my city, i would certainly protest its presence. and hope that pigeons would **** allll over it.

is it good that all of us hate this project or is it just bad that we are even so emotional about it that we have to spend time to write our protest?

just another useless publicity stunt of ma and his gang of students. a pitty

and yet it achieves exactly what it intended. polarisation and attention

Gobbleddygook Humbug. Stay of LSD and change the name of MAD to SAD.

I love it, its like where darth vader takes his family in the spring when the death star gets too hot and crowded.

china is totally taking over the world, you have been warned.

I especially love its majical ability to change scale in each of the photos
Imagine living in it, “shit were on the move again *things falling off walls and tables* and bugger me if we arent shrinking again”

The people living a small land (UK) will never understanding what is this.
The architects who living in a small land(UK) will only understand ‘ Brick’
The architects who working in a small land(UK) will only understand ‘ planning’

A bunch of Monkeys who will never understand what a tiger it is .

See, architects keep on doing these type of things because people and other architects keep on ‘celebrating’ such idiocy. One we, the public, agree on how stupid these things are, there will be no more ridiculous architectural proposals and we’ll go back to proposals that make sense.

(oh, and ‘Jeck’ - what the hell are you talking about?!?. Oh lord…)

They must’ve left out fital information to make this design not THE latest laughing stock on the internet.

You build this, it’s sideways arms would snap off.
It’s weight would crush the ground it was standing on.
It cannot move, I can’t even imagine why they would add that insane tidbit to the story.

It’s… it is a waste of time and money, even before it is build.
It is draining bandwidth from all of the newssites hosted on while reducing said website’s creadibility.
It has drained time from my life I could have spended slightly better.
The artsts working on it have lost a great deal of time they could have spended on… well, probably on another crazy-ass idea. But perhaps it would have inspired others a bit better.

Please… write this down in a wikipedia page and never look back again… ever.

Xtiaan, you need to lay off the lsd.
This is artists bulshitting, in its purest form.
That must be the explaination!

These artists are just checking out if the architecture-community will swallow this crap for art.

Ma yansong is hereby sentenced to death for producing shit as usual

It’s an architecture belongs no to this century even this planet sothat
most of you cannt enderstand and accept.
Its talking all for CONCEPT.

swarovski in coopearation whit Jeff Koons !
Such a shit makes me MAD.

“It’s an architecture belongs no to this century even this planet sothat
most of you cannt enderstand and accept.
Its talking all for CONCEPT.”

I is no understanding is talking you are accepting tiger monkey brick concept is not very very pretty too? You young some guy?

more information

I have found a lot more information for MAD and Mobile China Town at ASZOZO.

http://www.aszozo.com/node/8238

stupid & silly

Marketing!!

I am pretty sure this proves just how narrow-minded and blind the world of architecture actually is.
I am also pretty sure this is a big joke, and you guys all fell for it.

I think every person who posted some incredibly negative comment about how “This wont work!” or “This would suck to live in!” have proven yourselves to be complete morons.

This work is meant ONLY as a conceptual piece. This is NOT meant to be built. This is a comment on the contemporary understanding of China.

If you don’t like it, that is great, because I don’t either. However, please understand this for what it is before you make a stupid fucking comment.

If you want to see a piece that uses a similar method, check out NL Studio’s work from the same exhibition. It was amazing, and succeeded where this piece came up short.

Hello ,

days before i have discovered these images in the office(Strasbourg, France), tonight i got them one more time. I am not really sure that if i should say this is architecture if i respect those architects who work seriously in our history.

The very graphic presentation shows a very symbolic star, however, what else besides the form? Have we ever thought about how and what it meant by for a grandmother or a kid in terms of “architecture”?

When Le Corbusier presented l’Unité d’habitation after the WWII, he has clearly explained the project and his idea with plans, sections, drawings, text, models…etc. in order to give out enough information to tell people how his thought of architecture is. An icon may catch attention whereas it is not enough to be architecture. A star is a form, no matter it is a super or hyper. This is just about scale.

What is the order in this form?(if any), how does the order function? Why there are only the “super” graphics(the movie too) with no senses but not just a simple hand-drawn sketch to tell the story behind?

We cannot forget how Mies or Corbu made use of photo collage to tell architecture, as it is a good tool to communicate. However, today, if architect thinks 3D rendering can make us to believe or understand architecture easier, this thinking is not acceptable. Only communication can make understanding. These images make us confused, even tired. As they mean nothing than a form.

If this is an urban project, why there is no idea mentioning or explaining the transport? Does it mean that it is not important anymore to consider how to connect the extention to the existed city? Even in the film “The Fifth Element”(1997), we can even find out much more details. Yes, it is no doubt that sometimes a film maker can present an architectural idea better than an architect.

It is good to think about our future; these “super star” images are still far away from an architectural concept.

It is more important to think about architecture than a “star”.

How can this thing fly/move?

Nice project and visually very interesting. Just a bit worried how people think lately. With our environment disappearing we need to live closer to nature than ever. Keeping people locked in a star is not helping our already unsocial behavior. The efforts taken to get children to play outside again seems trivial. I can see all sorts of new phobias and depressions developing in the star.

stupid fancy idea

fancy, but sad: reflecting the present chinese value of being ‘rich and famous’? there are more valuable chinese (cultural) ideas that we can celebrate, right? it feels like the ’spaceship’ pixar has put in their latest animation.

there should be five yellow stars……..
the one in the centre is bigger
others around it are the same

That is really crazy! I am dying to see!