MICHELLE OBAMA

Beauty and enchantment have the power to heal. So does music. Harbin Opera House (photo) in northeast China is a symbol of that. Its designer, Chinese architect Ma Yansong, aims to push boundaries: Together with his practice MAD Architects, he wants to make cities more sensual and more human. Born in 1975, architecture’s new star began his career working for his mentor Zaha Hadid, the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Prize, and is in the process of completing various major projects like museums in Los Angeles and Rotterdam and residential complexes in Rome and Denver. In his native China too, his futuristic and organic designs provide a counterpoint to the race to erect new, high-rise megacities. Rather than skyscrapers that look like silos, he creates buildings that imitate the forms of nature: clouds, mountains or waves. “We need spaces where people can relax by immersing themselves in a different dimension of space and time. In a more spiritual world,” he recently commented on the completion of the crater-shaped Quzhou Sports Park, the largest earth-sheltered complex in the world.