( CNN ) -- Southwest of Toronto , in a satellite city called Mississauga , Ma Yansong 's vision of a flowing , organic architecture halts the tedium of a relentlessly box-shaped cityscape . His two residential towers are alike in their sinuous curvilinearity -- which enraptured locals nicknamed `` Marilyn Monroe '' -- but were designed separately . The first tower was so beloved by Missisaugans , a second was commissioned and completed last year . Since winning this first big international commission in 2006 , Ma 's eight-year-old Beijing firm MAD has made a name for itself as a leading exponent of urban design that 's both futuristic and respectful of nature . Their projects include breathtaking museums and towers in the Chinese cities of Harbin , Ordos and Tianjin , but Canada 's Absolute Towers are Ma 's favorite . He was only 30 years old when his design was commissioned . `` I 'd never built a building before , and that was a huge building . I had to figure out how to assemble my team , how to build a high rise . It was a surprise . I did n't know it was so complicated to make a building , '' he said . View a hi-res gallery of Ma Yansong 's 'Great Buildings ' Achieved with the help of Toronto architect Atilla Burka and structural engineer Sigmund Soudack , the first tower is 170 meters tall , with elliptical floor plates that twist at varying points depending on corresponding features in the landscape . Today , Ma says he 's glad he did n't know how difficult it would be to execute his vision -- he might not have tried if he had . `` I was so confident about what I proposed , because I was thinking about the city . '' The city appreciated it . `` Architecture lives in Mississauga at long last , '' wrote one critic , who compared the building 's sashaying , ribbed shape to the pleated , body-draping garments of fashion designer Issey Miyake . Another critic deemed it `` sassy , sexy and irreverent toward the formal pieties of cereal-box skyscraper modernism '' , and a comeback to `` Toronto developers who complain that they ca n't build and sell anything except the same boring stuff we 've been seeing since the Second World War . `` I did n't try to make it sexy , just not a box , '' Ma says . `` I 'm trying to express nature in big cities . I grew up in the old neighborhood of Beijing where you had a courtyard and trees . Actually , the whole of Beijing was a garden -- the Forbidden City -- and the lakes and gardens in the city center were all artificial , '' he said . Watch 'Great Buildings ' on Connect the World . `` 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 . iReport : Your favorite buildings . 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 do n'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 . ''
Chinese architect Ma Yansong 's favorite design is the Absolute Towers in Mississauga , Ontario . Locals have nicknamed the twisting residential towers `` Marilyn Monroe '' on account of their sinuous curves . The building he wishes he 'd designed is Louis Kahn 's Salk Institute in La Jolla , California . Ma aims to combine high-rise and high-density environments with nature , he says .