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"I think that's a good pattern for future cities. There must be a way to combine the high rise and high density environment with nature. Maybe we can have our gardens in the sky. We can link different buildings in the sky, and we can have a waterfall in a high rise. It would be beautiful."
The building Ma most wishes he had designed is the Salk Institute by Louis Kahn who, like Ma, studied at Yale.
Located in La Jolla, California, the building was commissioned by the inventor of the polio vaccine, Dr Jonas Salk, who wanted to create a place where scientists could be inspired.
Kahn designed two parallel buildings with protruding towers which afford space for study. The six-storey structures are separated by a light-filled, marble plaza with a central water channel leading out toward the Pacific Ocean.
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The building's use of concrete is widely praised, but Ma says he particularly likes its relationship to its environment.
"When people are in the central plaza, they feel so connected to nature, to the sky and the ocean, emotionally. I always imagine in 100 or 200 years, when people go there, they will feel the same," he said.
"I went there two or three years ago for the first time. I arrived there at midnight so I had to climb into the place, and was guided out by security.
"It was in the dark, so it looked different from the pictures -- everyone knows these pictures; you have the building on both sides and the ocean and sky in front -- but in the evenings, it's like a black hole," he says.
"The end is a void and it's horizontal not vertical, so you don't feel you're small and helpless. When you're in that space you feel you're the center, and you can talk to your future.