Dezeen Magazine

MAD creates furniture fit for a life on Mars

MAD founder Ma Yansong has designed a range of sci-fi-inspired furniture, designed to be used when humans colonise Mars.

The MAD Martian collection, designed for Beijing-based Gallery ALL, launched at Design Miami/Basel 2017, which is currently taking place in Switzerland.

Comprising a dining table, a chaise lounge chair, a candlestick, floor-to-ceiling lights and a console table, the collection came out a research project into the potential of Mars habitation.

The starting point for Ma was to question what would happen if human beings moved to Mars, and whether the furniture they take with them could inspire a love for both their new and old homes.

"I have never been to Mars, what will we discover when we get there? A red landscape, quiet horizon, frozen glaciers? Probably all is as beautiful, in its own way, as the Earth was thousands of years ago," said the MAD founder.

"I want to bring to Mars the Earth landscape, as I imagined it in my room as a child."

Looking to 20th-century science fiction, Yansong designed fluid shapes that have been made from aluminium, bronze and stainless steel.

Floor-to-ceiling suspension lights – designed as a homage to the 1960s Space Race – feature three polyurethane pendants, while a table rests upon a what looks like rocky landscape.

Gold-coloured candelabras are designed to look at home in the interiors of the distant future, and a silver chaise lounge is upholstered in leather.

"Sometimes I think Ma Yansong can talk to aliens," said Gallery ALL co-founder Wang Yu. "His architectural works are breathtakingly avant-garde in some way that makes the audience feel they stepped into another world. I challenged him to design a living space for Martians."

The MAD Martian collection is the latest in an ongoing series of commissions by Gallery ALL that are aimed at established Chinese designers. It debuts at Design Miami/Basel this week.

Ma founded MAD in 2004. The firm's best-known projects include the sinuous Harbin Opera House in China and the curvaceous Absolute Towers in Canada.

The studio ranked at number 32 among architects in the inaugural Dezeen Hot List, a guide to the most newsworthy and searched-for players in the design world.

The firm recently released a monograph overviewing past, present and future work. It is currently working on the new George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which will be built in Los Angeles.