MAD Architects, Led by Ma Yansong, Brings Fantastical Designs to the Lucas Museum

MAD Architects, the firm behind the Lucas Museum, has realized major cultural and residential projects across 16 countries. The studio, led by Ma Yansong, is known for audacious, hard-to-believe designs that dominate their surroundings. Among its signature works are etched towers that appear to churn like hula-hooping women, a museum shaped like an ancient stone, and an opera house that resembles a mountain bursting from the ground. The New York Times examines this approach in a September 23, 2026 article on the Lucas Museum's architects and the construction of fantasies. The piece, published in the Arts/Design section, focuses on Ma Yansong and MAD Architects. It highlights how the firm's buildings reject subtlety in favor of spectacle, with forms that seem to defy structural logic. The Lucas Museum itself is part of this lineage, though the article's emphasis is on the firm's broader portfolio and its signature aesthetic. The report underscores MAD's global reach, noting completed projects in 16 countries and counting. By linking the Lucas Museum to earlier works like the stone-like museum and the mountain opera house, the article frames the firm's architecture as a sustained exercise in fantasy-making. The New York Times article is dated September 23, 2026, and appears in its Arts/Design coverage.