You read our mind. We are featuring those projects during this week.

the outer house is severe, but it is not alien – materially it of the earth and the bricks give it human scale.

the inner house is very warm and the tubular spaces are smart and very inhabitable.

treating the interstitial space between this inner and outer house as a kind of inside-outside seems like a good strategy for responding to the harsh climate.

Some critcisms i would have would be

1) that the response to a harsh climate is fictitious given the reality of the future site of this home, which is in a lush suburban neighborhood filled with 100 monstrous and expensive villas, luxury cars, and families. The renderings look great in the context of the existing Mongolian wilderness but after this project is complete it may well turn out to be just another artifact in architectural Disneyland. (no doubt the fate of most of these homes)

2) the scale of the home is rather immense and daunting. This may be due to the project restrictions set by the Ordos officials, but either way scale and sensitivity to the human body I think are paramount issues in the design of a home.