ARCHITECT Ma Yansong is one of China's most prominent and innovative young architects and one of the first Chinese architects to work on major projects overseas.

The 37-year-old Beijing native is well known for his dramatic proposed "Floating Island," an official submission for the rebuilding of the New York World Trade Center. He is also known for Absolute Towers, a residential twin tower skyscraper in Mississauga, Ontario. The towers appear to undulate and their curves have led locals to call them "Marilyn Monroe."

He also designed the curving, globular Ordos Art and City Museum in the stark Gobi Desert in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It looks like an alien object with undulating aluminum panels that just landed from outer space.

Ma's style can best be described as dramatic and futuristic. Some say fantastic.

A number of his designs are so unusual, abstract and difficult to construct that they remain on the drawing board as inspirations for the future. For example, he has proposed "floating islands in the sky" because cities are so large and densely populated that it may be necessary to build in the sky.

Ma, who holds an architecture degree from Yale University, founded MAD architects in 2004, and two years later he won an international competition to design the Absolute Towers. In 2010 Ma became the first architect from China to receive a fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects. He worked as a project designer with Zaha Hadid in London and Eisenman architects in New York.

Last month, Shanghai Daily caught up with Ma in Shanghai and asked him about his vision of architecture and the role of architects.

"Architects should be observers of society ... as well as artists. We need artistic architects who have foresight, philosophical ideology and thoughts."

Unlike artists who must express their personal voice, "even when it is dissonant to everyone," an architect cannot do the same, he said. "Any of their ideas eventually would consume a huge amount of resources and it remains in place for decades and imperceptibly influences life."

Challenge, freedom and impressionistic are the three words he uses to summarize his ideas about architecture.

When he was a boy, Ma loved to draw. He was interested in landscapes and the natural world, but considered a film major at university because films are filled with stories and imagination.

"I think architecture is not just making a product, it's a medium full of imagination and life, so I think of it as art and ideas," he said. "The dialogue between architects' personal thoughts and their times could become a symbol of their era, as well as a way to express personal thoughts."

He calls his generation "a bit rebellious, focusing on the country and society as well as individualism ... When I discovered architecture could express personal ideology and observations, I became interested," he said.

After graduating from the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Ma studied for a master's degree at the University of Arizona in the States on full scholarship. Six months later he left, worked for a while and then transferred to Yale University.

"Yale was a free platform, and you could meet experts from all over the world, and they gave lectures," he said. "They were all different, so this platform was more important to me."

His favorite architect is Estonian-born American Louis Kahn (1901-74), a 20th century master whose works "not only touched the heart but also were influential in countries such as India and in the Middle East."

Kahn, who studied massive, medieval architecture in Europe, became a champion of functionalism. He was famous for, among other things, building livable, light-filled affordable public housing in India, where such housing was usually cramped and squalid. Locals wept on learning of his death. "You can see how architecture can influence a place culturally and emotionally, so I quite admire him," Ma said.

"Living in modern cities has limitations and responsibilities, and people want freedom, too," he said.

One of his famous very early MAD designs is the "Fish Tank," a 300mm x 300mm x 300mm aquarium containing transparent tunnels. It was designed after studying how fish use space. It was auctioned off.

"I looked at fish placed in simple, crude glass tanks that were designed to lower costs, rather than for the fish. I feel it's the same with buildings nowadays. They're not designed for people, instead they emphasize efficiency, capital and production volume."

For him, the question architects and city planners should be asking is what kind of new spaces people need today.

"Normally people don't know what they need, and their homes are pretty much the same in cities. Rarely do people choose what they desire," Ma said.

Of course, the fish swimming in Ma's tank probably don't know the difference between fish-friendly and other tanks. And it isn't known whether the fish are happy. But the principle of user-friendly design also applies to people.

"Cities now are building things up after erasing the environment, which is different from traditional urban planning," Ma said. "In the past the first priority was to protect the environment and maintain a harmonious relationship between the man-made things and environment."

Hutong Bubble 32, a space-age public toilet, is a bubble-like addition carefully inserted in a corner of a traditional Beijing courtyard house neighborhood. Inside is a bathroom, which old houses didn't have. One has been built.

"That bubble is like a dream, something surreal, but very individual," Ma said. "We wanted something futuristic that can represent individual life and modern humanity." He hopes courtyard houses can be protected as a way of life instead of simply architecture.

"'Protection' today is commercial, tearing down and rebuilding, however, without the neighborhood life. Residents want to leave because of poor conditions, no bathrooms and no heat," he said. "It's important to improve living conditions so people still live there."

Sometimes there are conflicts between Ma's unusual, expensive-to-build designs and commercial interests, but nonparticipation doesn't work. Compromise is necessary.

"The key is the original intention," he said. "It would be a problem if people only thought about money and betrayed principles. It's the architect's role to bring things together because they are the ones closest to intellectuals in the whole chain."