From Malay Mail · · 2m
George Lucas’s museum gets a spaceship home
Ma Yansong’s Lucas Museum opens in Los Angeles with a design meant to feel futuristic, natural and open to everyone.
In brief
Ma Yansong’s Lucas Museum opens in Los Angeles with a design meant to feel futuristic, natural and open to everyone. Ma Yansong wants landmark buildings to stir curiosity while making people feel welcome, not small. Originally reported by Malay Mail.
A ship has landed
Near downtown Los Angeles, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art looks like a spaceship, a tree canopy or a low cloud dropped among the palms.
“a giant spaceship has just landed”
Curiosity comes first
For architect Ma Yansong, the exact comparison matters less than the feeling. If the building makes people wonder, it is doing its job.
“sparks curiosity”
Lucas meets Ma
The museum opens on September 22. It was founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, and Ma’s sci-fi energy fits the Star Wars connection.
“The building takes on a futuristic feel that generates excitement”
Every visitor sees differently
Ma expects people to notice light, sky, clouds or even the cosmos as they move through the museum. He wants those reactions to vary.
“They might catch a beam of light”
Born near nature
Ma grew up in a Beijing hutong courtyard house, where trees and open pockets shaped daily life. That early closeness to nature still guides him.
“There was a very close connection to nature”
A global practice
After Yale and time in Zaha Hadid’s studio, Ma built MAD Architects into a firm behind major works in China, Canada and the Netherlands.
Mountains and water
His design language draws from shanshui, traditional Chinese paintings of mountains and water. The Lucas Museum turns that idea into lawns, trees and flowing paths.
A living roof
The Los Angeles museum is tied to its surroundings with grass, trees, running water and a roof planted with vegetation and solar panels.
Old ideas, new need
Ma sees today’s push for ecological design as linked to older Eastern architecture, where designed gardens still felt natural.
“traditional Eastern architecture mastered this long ago”
People before monuments
Ma says architecture is shifting away from buildings as status symbols. His goal is space people can enjoy, not structures that perform wealth or power.
“We aren’t using architecture to flaunt wealth or power”
Cities should feel open
That belief also shaped his Baiziwan Social Housing project in Beijing, designed with open movement, sunlight and shared gardens for low-income residents.
“everyone feels they are the masters of the city”
At a glance
Ma Yansong wants landmark buildings to stir curiosity while making people feel welcome, not small.
