ORDOS 100

I just found out about ORDOS 100, a project in Inner Mongolia to build 100 villas designed by 100 architects, to be built in 100 days.



Here's a little more detail:

The scope of the project is to Develop 100 hundred villas in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, for the Client, Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd. FAKE Design, Ai Wei Wei studio in Beijing, has developed the masterplan for the 100 parcels of land and will curate the project, while Herzog and de Meuron have selected the 100 architects to participate. The collection of 100 Architects hail from 27 countries around the globe. The project has been divided into 2 phases. The first phase is the development of 28 parcels while the second phase will develop the remaining 72. Each architect is responsible for a 1000 square meter Villa.

I'll get to the gimmick of the Swiss duo selecting this "dream team" in a bit, but first let's take a look at the site plan:


Looks like suburbia in Mongolia to me. Looks like it was designed by the client, not by the artist who collaborated with Herzog & de Meuron on the Bird's Nest, among other projects. It's apparently surrounded by more of the same, but it's disappointing nevertheless. The green space (in grey, running from the body of water on the left to the cluster of darker-grey cultural buildings on the right) attempts to salvage things, though its scale is a bit paltry. It would be interesting to see the codes and/or guidelines for the parcels (that's probably in the interactive forum, though I've yet to register to view this and other privileged information).

To the list. I was taken aback, though hardly surprised, by the coast-centric (east more than west) of the architects chosen from the United States. Take a look:



Only one architect out of the 23 listed does not practice on the east or west coast. I'm guessing this is due to several reasons (Herzog & de Meuron's teaching positions at Harvard, the general coast-centric nature of the architectural media, fear of Midwestern prairie fires) but the quality of residential architecture outside the coasts is not one of them.

Additionally, an expanded view of the North America list yields a decent number of Mexican architects but zero one Canadian architect. Ditto on my above argument. It just goes to show how much personal relationships and networking play a role in fostering opportunities like this one. How good of an opportunity ORDOS 100 really is remains to be seen.

(via architecturephoto.net)