The last starchitect: Ma Yansong’s ostentatious, otherworldly case for the architectural showstopper

Ma Yansong steps into a spotlight of his own design. The star Chinese architect is in the entry plaza at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the audacious and gargantuan blockbuster of a building he’s designed in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park to hold the art collection of filmmaker George Lucas. Ma, 51, is here for the museum’s press preview day in early September, and gamely walks into a circle of sunlight shining through the oculus in the roof of the $1 billion museum, where he poses for a crescent of photographers. He’s the face and creative leader of MAD Architects, the Beijing-based firm with offices in L.A. and Rome that he’s run for 22 years. He’s arguably the most famous architect in China, and one of the most famous in the world. Ma’s curvy and adventurous buildings have become landmarks in cities across his native country, from an opera house in northern Harbin that spills out like an open-armed octopus to a crater-esque sports stadium in Quzhou to a recently completed cluster of museums in Shenzhen that resemble gigantic boulders. Recently several large-scale projects have also been completed outside of China, including the spiraling Fenix Museum in Rotterdam, the Nether…