Ordos 100
In December 2007 my boss Kamiel received an e-mail signed by the office “fake design”. They wanted to know if we where interested to design one of 100 villas in inner-mongolia. Each of them would have about one-thousand squaremeters. The only thing that made the mail remotely trustable was that i mentioned that they project was curated by swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The client seemed to be a 40 year-old self made man from china, that wanted to develop a whole neighboorhood in the new build city called Ordos.
A month later Kamiel was riding a champagne colored bus with frosted over windows through the inner-mongolian desert. He was part of a group of 30 other international architects and some camera teams that came forming the 1st phase to look at the site at minus 20 degrees celsius. With him was Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and his co-workers to whoms he had given vanguard haircuts. He was the boss of “fake design” which very proudly he stated chinese would pronounce “fuck design”. The sand-dunes where covered with a thin layer of snow. Back in the 5 star hotel in the nearest city Dongcheng the participants engaged in heavy drinking.
Back in the netherlands Kamiel ask me to become project leader of a team formed in its core by a french, a korean, a japanese collogue and me. This way 2 month later me too was driving through the inner mongolian desert in a champagne colored bus. This time the crowed was even bigger as the second phase had joined and a lot of journalist, photographers and camera teams where observing our steps. This temperature was plus 20 degrees celcius and more. With everybody stuck in a luxury hotel for 5 days the project developed just as much into a social connecting place as it was about architecture.
The design of NL resembles a big block dropped in the dunes. It’s hard geometric shape counters the flowing forms of the sand. In its middle a big hole is stenciled out where the inner garden is situated. The whole house envelopes it an evolves around it. The garden is highly stylized and the opposite to the extreme climate found outside the house. It should also be used as a meeting place for neighboors.
The three layers of the villa are organized into the semi-basement holding the workers quarters, the garage, storage and technique the pool and fitness area and gaming, the ground floor with the south-wing dedicated to dining and the north-wing holding the hall and the living and upper floor with a series of lounge spaces from which the bedrooms are accessed. the master bedroom- has 40qm. One is able to walk a loop through the house.
The design has been handed over to the Beijing Institute of Architecture and currently carried out by them.*
february - july 2008
project leader: Michael Schoner
team: Jung-Hwa Cho, Gen Yamamoto, Florent Le Corre, Wei-Nien Chen, Amadeo Linke
ordosproject
