ORDOS 100 #5: HHF

This villa is located in plot #51 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: HHF Architects
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Project Team: HERLACH HARTMANN FROMMENWILER with Nicole Baron, Daichi Takano, Kohsuke Uesugi and Christian Weyell
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Site Area: 1,521 sqm
Constructed Area: 925 sqm

Context and shape of the building

The physical context for the Ordos 100 project is limited to climatical conditions and some few regulations by the master plan done by FAKE Design. Within Ordos 100, this project is simply the HHF house. It’s making an issue out of the fact that 99 other architects are simultaneously and independently planning 99 houses with an identical program within the same master plan. The outer shape of the building and the shed roof is directly developed as an embossed writing of the letters HHF, acronym of the architects and name of the office. This logo can only be read from the air or in the model. From the street level the writing is never readable. From the ground, the shape of the roof is rising above the surrounding vegetation, reflecting the diverse light situations and various shapes of the rooms inside the building.

The outside area is planned as an extension of the nearby park. Because of the extreme climatical conditions and the low construction costs, the building is kept as compact as possible.

Construction and technical aspects

To guarantee earthquake protection even with all the empty spaces on the second floor, every floor slab is supported separately. Each of these floor slabs is lying on the central concrete core and on one outside wall, which is going without cease from the foundation to the roof. To stabalize the building, the concrete walls next to the stairs are built as buttress walls. The external wall is a rear ventilated brick construction, whereas the inner wall is a combination of a cast-in-place concrete framework with a brickwork infill. The outer shell is an exposed brickwork within a concrete frame. From the roof the rainwater is brought down in downpipes, located between concrete pilaster strips. ‘The shafts for all technical installations are integrated into the central core. In the basement the pipes are collected in a suspended ceiling, from where they are brought to the installation zone.

In the basement there is also a central air-conditioning for the whole building. The intake for the fresh air is removed from the house and integrated in the garage box. In the house the air is distributed from the core of the building.