The cover image for this issue of Artkrush is a detail from an artistic rendering of Superstar: A Mobile China Town, a plan for a "self-sustaining future mobile community" designed by Beijing-based architecture collective MAD. For the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture, 12 firms were asked to produce disruptive designs for suburban Rome. MAD's response sets a Chinatown within a futuristic station, providing host cities with modern Chinese culture and a unique population solution. Superstar accommodates 15,000 inhabitants with all the necessities of ultramodern life, including lakes for drinking water and a digital cemetery.

MAD was founded by Ma Yansong in 2004. Born in Beijing in 1975, Ma received his Master of Architecture degree from Yale University in 2002 before working under Zaha Hadid in London and Eisenman Architects in New York. He was recently selected by ICON magazine as one of the most influential young architects working today and has won numerous awards and competitions, including the Guangzhou Sun Plaza International Competition in 2005, the Forum Award from the Architectural League of Young Architects in 2006, and the Absolute Tower competition in 2006. When MAD received an Absolute commission to build condos near Toronto, Canada, it became the first Chinese studio to win an international architecture competition outside China. MAD's work has been exhibited worldwide, most recently in this past summer's Map Games, a group show that invited 30 artists from China and Europe to create new maps of Beijing; MAD's Green Axis follows a line from the dynastic Imperial Palace to the new Olympic Park, injecting the city with a natural lifeline and transforming landmarks like Tiananmen Square into parkland. MAD's designs were also shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum's ChinaDesignNow show last spring, and as a solo show at the Danish Architecture Center in 2007.

Ma's designs mimic familiar earthly allegories, as emphasized in the harmonious environments of traditional Chinese architecture, while maintaining both a futuristic and utilitarian appeal. Fake Hills, his slated residential plan for China's southern coastal city of Beihai, undulates with its surrounding topography, while rising high, spreading wide, and relying on natural ventilation and sun shading for temperature maintenance. For MAD, residential housing does not automatically translate into super blocks and cookie-cutter houses, but becomes an opportunity to inject the everyday with an avant-garde spirit, bringing cutting-edge Chinese design far beyond the Bird's Nest. - Lauren McKee