Architects: MAD
Location: Erdos, Inner Mongolia
Director in Charge: Ma Yansong, Yosuke Hayano, Dang Qun
Design team: Shang Li, Andrew C. Bryant, Howard Jiho Kim, Matthias Helmreich , Zheng Tao, Qin Lichao, Yang Lin, Sun Jieming Yin Zhao , Du Zhijian
Collaborators: China Institute of Building Standard Design and Research, The Institute of Shanxi Architectural Design and Research
Site Area: 27,760 sqm
Constructed Area: 41,227 sqm
Status: Under Construction
Client: Erdos Municipal Government
Images: MAD
Erdos Museum is located in a city that is currently being built, almost overnight.
Driven by a booming economy, the Municipal Government of Erdos has determined to build a new city centre, dozens of kilometers away from the current city. There was nothing but the Gobi Desert on this site in 2005. An urban masterplan was created, entitled ‘Ever Rising Sun On The Grass Land’. This plan drew a beautiful but empty image, one which fulfills the wishes of the government, but doesn’t hold much for the people who will have to live there.
Erdos Museum will be created at the centre of this new city. Our concept is a reflection and a reaction to the masterplan. The design is a natural, irregular nucleus, to contrast with the planned city; to provide interior scenery completely separate to that which is outside. The museum is wrapped in reflective metal louvers. The surface of the museum thus reflects and fragments the surroundings.
The interior will become a new public space, divided into several exhibition halls, connected by continuous white curvilinear walls. The glazed roof will let light into this space, whilst the louvers will allow natural ventilation.
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- master plan
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- structure diagram
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- cladding diagram
good god….another shapeless blob that costs alot of money.
I’d hardly consider it shapeless. The thing is all shape.
Perhaps you mean it lacks formality.
With ~7 windows, this seems more like a steel-caged bunker. I think these blob shapes could use some huge surgical section slices.
This building with its ‘blob’ shaped roof
http://www.archdaily.com/7391/sports-facilities-for-colegio-vizcaya-acxt/
is much friendlier and inviting.
Avena Soap………………………..melting……….kids love it, many Archaictects dont.
gr8! it’s really “MAD”
potato with a window…
couragous engineers
Mmmmpppffff. I need a nap. :-/
A while ago someone coined the term ‘blob architecture’ – That was at least 10 years ago. However, with the advancements in computer and building technology, the term has become somewhat outdated – perhaps a new term needs to be coined.
I would like to propose: “Cow Dung Architecture” – as we know “Cow Dung” is not a new term, but combined with the word “architecture” it takes on a new meaning which is appropriate to designs like this one. (see link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_dung
Should you not be completely convinced that “Cow Dung Architecture” is a fiting term, feel free to submit what YOU think an appropriate term would be.
Have a good day.
As what Zaha Hadid ever said on media, “Ma, who had been working in her team, is working nothing but under her shadow”
I am sorry, but…is this supposed to be aesthetically appealing in some way? Because in my world, this is downright ugly. No sense of proportion or relation to the surroundings. The master plan drawing is ridiculous and so is the explanation.
This looks silly altogether…a piece of melted whatever, punched unconsciously into ugliness and clad, of course, in unobtainium.
I thought that when you’re “designing” blobs, you’re not supposed to stop at the first randomly generated thingie and send it to the engineers, but you know… study, research, develop…Well, guess not.
Yep, really beautiful.
joninberlin, Katsudon, walter faulk, i’d really like to see what is your idea of architecture.. maybe you could show us. OF COURSE this building is not a sort of “ideal” for architecture, it can be a bit outdated, because the tendencies change every year.. but still this building has it’s individuality, it’s pretty elegant, if it reminds U of cow_dung.. well cow dung stinks, it is disgusting for us, but if you look at it as it is, it can be a nice sculpture..
It’s not a blob, a bunker (museums need no windows),a potato and not any cow dung.It’s a piece of quite fine and imaginative high-tech architecture. And I dont’t love it, but I like it.
Enough with these unreasonable blobs!
This to me is ugly.
Oh, how good we are at telling the ugly from the beautiful. This is architecture, -a term used by anyone and reasonable to use already when someone has put their foot in the sand and made a mark.
What kind of architecture though ? Well, i think it’s still in research. I say like the swiss architect i cannot remember the name of, “I don’t do blobs, not because I think it is not interesting, but because I don’t know how to argue for that type of architecture”.
Everyone should be open to theese buildings. The argument of making it a mirror I don’t really buy, because a square box can also be made reflective. as for the skin system, I think Snohetta is going to come up with the first ever beautiful blob-skin, -bent steel tubes that are 40-60mm in diameter.
Hi David, I normally avoid any type of debate on platforms like this but in this case I felt like I needed to say something. Also, I can tell you a little something about what my idea of architecture is (which I am sure many architects will agree with)
This project lacks everything I look for and expect in a piece of architecture. Signs of a funtional program, a distinguishable funtion, response to the existing context/environment, a budget, even a response to graviational pulls – all the constraints which make architecture a challenge, the constraints that give a piece of architecture its character – the constraints a good architect responds to appropriately.
Architecture in the last 500-1000 years have possessed these characteristics. It would be the same if humans started to be born with blobs for legs – it just wouldn’t be the same…
These type of buildings fit more into the ‘installation’ category. Structures without the same amount of social responsibility. Much like Expo buildings, or for that matter, most of the stuff built in China over the last few years for the Olympics.
Anyways, that is my idea of Architecture.
j.
Please could someone put some context into the pics!
“all the constraints which make architecture a challenge, the constraints that give a piece of architecture its character – the constraints a good architect responds to appropriately” – I LIKE IT.
but sometimes buildings that are more like “installation” – with blurred definitions, challenging stereotypes, are really inspirational. doing such buildings is a huge risk, it’s a rel challenge you could end up with a kitschy circus.. but this particular design in not THAT bad.. maybe it’s not as fresh, interesting as Frank Gehry but still..
finally, joninberlin thank you for your response, I appreciate it.
Dear David,
Of course i will not give you one or ten exemples of what could illustrate what i could consider to be “good” or “bad” architecture because it would be too simplistic.
As i am about to write an answer i see Mr Cheap gave a good one already.
I don’t have anything against “blobs”, but i think it’s much more demanding in term of design reflexion than a “box” regarding to the context especially (although designing a nice box is not given to everyone ;-) ). To me it just look like a lack consideration about the project if you decide to do it just as a blob for a blob, especially when we are talking about a program like a museum!
Not taking care of the context and the program seems to be a speciality of Mr Ma Yansong, and as a former Hadid team member, i think he forgot to take a lot of lessons from her but didn’t forgot to take the signature stamp as a marketing tool.
I strongly believe that it’s the context and the program that leads a project (nothing new eh?) to stand for a long time on its legs, and the consideration it have for the human scale.
This answer can take the form of a blob why not.
In each MAD project i only see the expression of a big ego. Like if the purpose was to mark the land with their logo out of context. Why not play with the imposed conditions and make it yours in place of crushing the place to ignore it?
Ok to get a “nice object”? (and i don’t consider the gesture of this design as a nice object in my own taste) I then prefer have a collection of nice object on my shelf.
MAD seem have forgot that a city isn’t a shelf except maybe in China’s new cities and Middle-East, and we are here in China… And so much materials and efforts to make a skin stand-up that is just so disconnected of the reality of building up an architecture. So much steel tubes for a soap bubble, there’s something fake here for me.
I’m open to hear anyone who could make me consider this project as a very nice museum for Erdos city and its inhabitants. Well at least it’s nice if it can attract enought onlookers in this region and that’s maybe what it’s supposed to do, but i’m still bored to see another building that looks like a old chewing-gum stuck on the ground.
Ok i just saw your posts after clicking submit.
Joninberlin said it better, more concise and with a better english. ;-)
I call it ” bubblegum design “…:-) design..not architecture. It looks interesting -same opinion like malgorzata and david – but if it is a good architecture or not , we cannot say it. What we see is a cover ..but there are a lot of other important architecture elements ( joninberlin specify some of them…) we dont know . We cannot read them out of those pictures! I think we should stop to judge “definately” an architecture on the base of visualisations…it is only the package of the architecture good. What is “inside” could be precious but also rubbish . I am not shure but suppose (alone becouse of the huge amount of steel used for the cover construction) in this case, this “thing” is as architecture as a whole despite interesting cover just ordinary, something in the middle between precious and rubbish , but more second then first.
Blob, blob, blob, blooooooooooob.
God damnit.
Random achitecture.
Like “guns do not kill: the person behind it do” … many architects have taken to CATIA in the same way.
Interesting point about smooth surfaces though: they’re just a series of facets, “flats” … perhaps one day (seeing that how obesity is a growing phenomenon-ma-na-ma-na; sorry, can’t say that word without ….) every surface will be radius so that we roll rather than walk. Rolling is more efficient but until that completely becomes viable in every respect/aspect … I think Mr/s. Wheel inventor can sleep soundly.
Sometimes architecture has to have an innate quality to it that elevates the human spirit, that separates itself from the mundane and I think that cultural project are the perfect stage for that sort of exploration, you can’t always have these strict parameters by which you define architecture or by which you think architecture should be judged by(ergo, response to gravity, functionality and so on) because then you would be limiting the creative side of this practice we love so much, YES we have to be responsible with this power we are given but at the same time the architecture we produce has to be a fitting tribute to that power …NOT TO DEFEND BLOB ARCHITECTURE WHICH BY THE WAY WAS COINED MORE THAN TEN YEARS AGO… a sculpture in the garden (“a new city center” any one reminded of Brezilia by Oscar Niemeyer) is more of what it is, oh and its a museum…
It’s great that projects like this get so much attention (our comments). First, I’m not a sold-out blob aficionado. On the other hand, I can’t outright dismiss every blob I meet; some are more successful than others. Joninberlin’s Cow-dung architecture is amusing and thoughtful and raises an important distinction in my mind and that is one of context. Usually I’m not much for cow-tailing to context, but in this case the distinction that Joninberlin alludes to is the difference between architecture as an object in an empty field condition and an architecture as an object among other objects.
While not as blob-ish as this work, Gehry’s Bilbao Museum is more of an object among objects, which is to say the architecture has something to respond to, to work with and against. Likewise, Peter Cook’s Graz Art Museum, more akin to this project, addresses the same situation, though in more and less successful ways: scale being particularly important to each. Much of the distrust in this type of architecture is warranted, and a greater degree of rigor and communication from its proponents is necessary. Joninberlin’s other argument regarding humans born with blobs for legs is trite. Some people ARE born with blobs for legs, i.e. no legs at all. This isn’t a politically correct argument I’m making as much as it is an acknowledgement of differences.
Finally, I do find the interior renderings of the project to be more interesting, but that’s about as far as they allow one to go. I can also appreciate the assembly, engineering, and construction images. An architecture like this naturally requires different solutions in its execution. Francis’s comment about the faceting versus continuous curves in designing and building this kind of architecture is well taken. There was a lot of emphasis put on this in my education, as if achieving the construction of a continuous curve is somehow a meaningful architectural objective. However I will admit that it is a meaningful construction objective, but these are two very different things.
at least with that indifferent and undefinite blob form it doesn’t have to be accurately built; whitch I doubt it’ll be in the end.. so we don’t have to worry about unexact details…
I’m a designer and an artist, not an architect, so I don’t have the same set of criteria as many of you I guess. My artist side leans more towards form while my designer side leans more towards function. I appreciate Tommy’s thoughts very much. I really enjoy the object among objects perspective. Why does a response to the environment have to be a linear one? Why not a major jump or bump or direct opposition to it’s environment? Blending in with nature can be beautiful and an architectural masterwork. But blending into a city scape? How drab.
Tommy, thanks for your comment, I enjoyed reading it. (In fact, I’ve bookmarked your blog).
As for my ‘blobs as legs’ comment (admittedly a poor choice of words which was not meant to come across as unpolitically correct) – point well taken. I do admit that my strong opinion towards ‘blob architecture’ hinders my ability to acknowledge and appreciate differences. Something I need to work on.
My bad…
I’m a designer and an artist, not an architect, so I don’t have the same set of criteria as many of you I guess. My artist side leans more towards form while my designer side leans more towards function. I appreciate Tommy’s thoughts very much. I really enjoy the object among objects perspective. Why does a response to the environment have to be a linear one? Why not a major jump or bump or direct opposition to it’s environment? Ego? Please anything in a city these days whether square, blob or otherwise is a huge monument to human achievement and mans mastering of the earth and it’s elements. If you don’t want to have a big ego, perhaps you’re in the wrong profession. Blending in with nature can be beautiful and an architectural masterwork. But contextually responding to a city scape? How drab. This blob corresponds with nature way more than any boxitecture I’ve seen.
I’m not a huge fan of this aesthetic or this building (I actually like boxes), but I think I would probably be impressed to see it in person. It is a sculpture. Does a museum need to strictly just house art and not be a work of art itself as well?
I feel like this discussion could have been going on centuries ago. “Why an arch and not post and beam?” Advancement in construction and engineering transforms the worlds view of architecture and what the spaces we live and work in should be.
Great discussion. Nice change from the “it’s an ugly urinal” comments of late.
joninberlin, no worries. I am in fact guilty of my own trite comments from time to time. Feel free to jab me in the ribs when I make one. Glad you’re reading!
OMG!!! its a huge booger!!!
Seriously, I like it