By saying good bye to the year of Snake, we would like to welcome the year of Ma (the Horse) with you all, on behalf of Ma Yansong, MAD’s partners and the MADers. Thank you for supporting us and bearing witness to our growth in the past.

We look forward to building upon our achievements from 2013 and we proudly look on as three MAD designs are under construction right now--they are China Wood Sculpture Museum in Harbin, Tai Lake Moon Hotel in Huzhou and Beijing Conrad Hotel. MAD's Harbin Culture Island is under steady progress, with its overall structure completed and the entire project beginning to take shape. Its main building, Harbin Grand Theater will be open to the public by the end of 2014.

In June 2013, MAD’s solo exhibition, Shanshui City opened in a Qing dynasty courtyard garden in Beijing. We also released a booklet with same name simultaneously as the manifesto on ideals concerning futuristic habitation. "Shanshui City" is a combination of city density, functionality and the artistic conception of natural landscape. It aims at composing a future city that takes human spirit and emotion at their cores. This is a long-term dream and an experiment through practice. In 2013, we already started to form Shanshui City into reality with a few large-scale urban complex projects, eg, Nanjing Zendai Thumb Plaza, which is located near the new Nanjing South Railway station; and the Chaoyang Park project in CBD area in Beijing. We have finished the CD phase of these projects, and groundbreaking has started on those sites. Also, the 2nd phase of Taiping Lake in Huangshan Mountain Village is prepared to go into its DD phase.

In 2014, a few of MAD’s oversea projects will start. There are the three apartment designs in Rome, Paris and Beverly Hills LA. By the end of 2013, MAD was invited to participate in two international competitions, one is a museum extension in Rotterdam, the other, by far the biggest competition so far, is the new CBD urban planning project in Moscow. The results will be released in 2014.

MAD has been keeping its active pace in art and culture venues in the past year. Besides the Shanshui exhibition mentioned above, Ma made a space installation called Moon Landscape for The Swarovski “Digital Crystal” exhibition during the Beijing Design Week. In December, MAD presented its landscape installation work ‘ Shanshui Experiment Complex’ in the Shenzhen Biennale. Ma Yansong has also been invited to lecture in various conferences and institutes, eg, the Summer Davos Dalian, PLÅT annual seminar in Oslo, Kunsthaus Bregenz, the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and the Barlett School of Architecture, UCL in London.

In the year of Horse, Ma and MAD will take solid steps towards the future as a book on Shanshui City will be published in China and Internationally. We expect to further develop the city into a better future with you all, there should be new possibilities generated out of the discourse and to be shared with everyone.