Previously, we have covered the Ordos 100 project quite extensively, giving you an inside look at the Inner Mongolia development. Back when Cai Jiang proposed the initiative to build one hundred 1000sqm villas designed by 100 up-and-coming architects in a mere 100 days, most questioned if the project was a hoax while others felt the development’s free-for-all attitude would not yield a unifying strong result. Yet, even with these concerns, the 100 firms responded to Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Wei Wei’s invitation to design the villas and transform a barren land. However, this development took quite an unexpected twist.
Read more about the project after the break.
The development seemed like a great idea and full of possibilities. Ordos was basically viewed as a blank canvas, patiently awaiting its new identity. And with this unique strategy, the land would benefit from not one or two talented architects, but rather from 100 fresh takes and new perspectives. Yet, it soon became evident that having 100 unrelated villas created an area that lacked cohesiveness, any contextual relationships and of course, an overall defining identity. Upon seeing these shortfalls, the local planning authority is currently seeking to explore new ways of procuring innovative and high quality architecture through the establishment of codes and rules. To be fair, many architects of the original planning initiative were concerned about the lack of restrictions/guidelines. If the architects’ concerns had been addressed earlier in the project, there is no doubt that their development ideas would have fused together more elegantly.
So, Plasma Studio will participate with some of the leading Chinese and China-based international offices in the next phase of development. Each of these new architectural teams will have to locate five cube-shaped volumes on two different sites on the edge of the city.
Plasma’s vision stresses the role of the ground by articulating ripples and tessellations from which the inner building cores appear to sprout. By emphasizing the ground, the buildings will benefit from using the subterranean temperature to warm or cool the indoor air. The tubes can be integrated economically into the required large underground parking and then taken up to the various office levels through a net of vertical ducts at the vertices of the inner lightwells.
We are disappointed to see the failure of the Ordos 100, but we are excited to see the new ideas and we will be sure to keep you updated.
Check out other buildings by Plasma on AD here.
“To be fair, many architects of the original planning initiative were concerned about the lack of restrictions/guidelines.”
Sure, and many would also be concerned with Hausmann, Speer or New Urbanism. How do restrictions and guidelines make this a “better” urban project than it was before? Was it not a shady urban concept to build 100 speculative, designer homes in the middle of the Inner Mongolian desert? Are restrictions and guidelines the cure-all for Inner Mongolia’s surprisingly slumping housing market?
To really be fair, perhaps we should focus on what this post implies for the “up-and-coming architects” that designed the first 100 villas (for free, I’m told), who are now going to be replaced by “some of the leading Chinese and China-based international offices in the next phase of development.” And even better, they’ll be doing this all under the watchful eye of Plasma Studio, truly the champions of rigorous Inner Mongolian urban design. I know this is true because they design “ripples and tessellations from which the inner building cores appear to sprout.” Sounds like a winner to me!
If this news is real (and I have my doubts, a la Serero’s Eiffel Tower debacle), let it be a warning for those trying to strike it rich. Failed projects such as this, and more recently the Kaohsiung Pop Music Center competition, are a death knell for a vulnerable method of practice reliant on the whim of those that see monetary value, not virtue, in the allure of our practice.
no context, no plans, no elevations, no sections, poor speech, archdaily should increase the posts level.
^ Well said, Rembo.
As far as one can tell, this Plasma Studio thing has nothing to do with the original Ordos 100 client or site; but rather is just another big, multi-architect proposal that happens to be in Ordos.
And Rembo, you were told wrong, I know for a fact the client/organizers did pay for the Ordos 100 architects to develop their villa designs – to DD level, and a decent amount.
+1 Rembo
Having just been to the site, there will be little lost with the failure of the Ordos 100 plan. As for whether the new plan is an improvement, that remains to be seen. But what is plainly obvious from visiting the site and seeing the scale of construction is that Ordos (at least the new city of Kangbashi where all the new stuff is going up) is not yet a viable city. And if architects want to pad their wallets with commissions there, they are certainly free to do so. However, there is little likelihood that anyone will actually live in the spaces constructed for at least some time to come. Ninety percent of units are not inhabited in Kangbashi, though they are all purchased. The city of Ordos devised Kangbashi essentially as a capital sink for the city’s new money and people have gone for it, buying up multiple units at a time without any plan to live in them or rent them (if you’re an overnight millionaire, and there is no property tax, you don’t bother with renting to folks). anyway, few people would actually want to live in the current buildings since Kangbashi is enormous but sparsely populated and very few commercial outlets exist, except those catering to the thousands of migrant workers who sleep in the buildings under construction or under the stars. To afford the apartments in Kangbashi means that you likely no longer want to associate closely with the riff-raff who fill the cheap restaurants in town.
It’s a creepy place.
Moreover, the construction of homes there is visibly second-rate. Buyers in Ordos are not terribly sophisticated and their sensitivity to interior design, space layout, and landscape architecture is minimal. So maybe they don’t care, but, according to builders I spoke with, the homes are generally poorly built with cheap materials that look good from photographic distance but won’t well withstand ten years uninhabited in the brutal climatic conditions of Inner Mongolia.
The hard-on for Ordos is totally unmerited. Even Ma Yansong’s impressive museum is overrated — from a functional standpoint, how does a curator arrange exhibitions without any flat wall spaces? Erect false walls as needed? Sounds like a pointless waste of space. But hey, it looks cool!
I won’t be surprised by a future post announcing Plasma Studio’s retreat from Ordos.