ORDOS 100 #9: Sou Fujimoto

This villa is located in plot #70 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: Sou Fujimoto Architects
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

I propose a primordial place to live before a notional ‘house’ became a ‘house;’ when it was uncongealed to be all at once a house, a city, a garden, a forest, a prairie, the natural and the artificial. It is analogous to the ruins of ancient cities, to the natural landscapes, to the network of neural activities in a stimulated mind, and to the structure of the Universe.

Not an Object, but a Field of Relationships

A house is not an object.

A house is the totality of frequencies registered as a place of living before differentiating into a house, a city, a garden, a forest, and a prairie.

The masterplan, a collection of demarcated plots and residential volumes, was reinterpreted as a nebulous field of interrelationships similar to a weather chart. Instead of “one object per one plot,” various spatial gradations begin to emerge within the plot. Surrounding contexts and complexities of their reciprocal influence are given a form. I speculate a condition in between architecture and landscape, exteriority and interiority.

Telescopic Vessel by Walls of Voids

To be a house and to be a garden, to be open and to be closed, interiorized exterior, exteriorized interior, continuity and discontinuity, domesticity and urbanity. To be natural and to be artificial; to produce a place that incorporates these discrepant antinomies, I propose a telescopic vessel by walls of voids.

Throughout the plot, the walls are positioned like a spiral. However, these simultaneously are not walls. These are walls of voids with countless openings. Space fluctuates with the openings’ sizes, forming spaces that manifest the gradations within the plot envisioned as a field of relationships.

Between those walls, various rooms and gardens intermingle as they fuse into one another. The feeling of a large expanse coupled with the feel of a comfortable shelter, results in a scale that transforms with use and creates rich depths by multiplicity of inside and outside. This also generates diverse relationships with the surrounding environ as it is simultaneously opened and closed.