Shaped like a large undulating blob, the Ordos Museum is clad in polished metal tiles that are resistant to frequently occurring sandstorms.

Galleries inside the museum are housed in smaller blobs, connected by bridges.

Entrances on both sides of the building allow local residents to use the atrium as a through-route.

This isn't the first high-profile project in Ordos, the newly constructed city for a million people - artist Ai Weiwei masterplanned 100 private villas by different architects there back in 2008 – see all our stories about the project here.

Photography is by Iwan Baan. More images of this project can be found on his website.

Here's some more information from MAD:

MAD’s Ordos Museum Completes

Construction of the MAD designed Ordos Museum has recently been completed in fall 2011. Familiar yet distinct, the museum appears to have either landed in the desert from another world or to always have existed. From atop a dune- like urban plaza, the building is enriched with a convergence of naturalistic interiors, bathed in light. The result is a timeless architecture in a modern city of ruins.

Six years ago, the Inner Mongolia Ordos was an extended landscape of the majestic Gobi desert. Today, it is a urban centre mired in a common controversy in modern Chinese civilization: the conflict between the people's long standing traditions and their dreams of the future. Architects are asked to develop the urban landscape and yet need to be mindful of the delicate sustenance of minority cultures and its future potentials. In 2005, the local bureaucrats established a new master plan for its city development. Upon the initialization of this master plan, MAD was commissioned by the Ordos city government to conceive a museum to be a centerpiece to the new great city.

Influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, MAD envisioned a mysterious abstract form capable of fostering an alternate, timeless development of Chinese tradition and future. Whilst the surface of this shape functions as a metal container critical to protect the interior from the harsh winters and frequent sand storms of the region, metaphorically this external layer operates as a shield protecting the precious culture and history of the city from the unknown growth of the city. The museum appears to float over a waving sand hill, a gesture saluting the landscapes which have now been supplanted by the streets and buildings of the new cityscape. This plaza is now a favorite amongst the locals who gather their families and friends to explore, play or lounge in the pleasant landscape.

Entering the museum presents visitors with a strong contrast to the exterior: an airy monumental cave flushed with natural light through skylights. The cave links to a canyon which carves out a void between the galleries and exhibition hall and is brightly illuminated at the top. Patrons maneuver along the base of these primitive surroundings and through the light across mid-air tectonic bridges, reminiscent of the intersection of the past and the future of the Gobi landscape. Visitors will repeatedly cross these sky bridges and reflect upon their journey from a variety of picturesque vantages.

The local community, as well, is encouraged to pass through the base of the central canyon which connects the two public entries at opposite ends without entering the exhibition hall or galleries. The varying internalized flows of circulation are guided by a succession of light and shadow, at times mysteriously shaded and occasionally brilliantly bright yet consistently engaging.

For the museum employees, a south facing, naturally lit interior garden is shared by the office and research programmes of the museum, creating a natural work environment.

The completion of the museum has provided the local citizens a place to embrace and reflect upon the fast paced development of their city. People meet organically in the naturalistic landscapes of the museum, an intersection of natural and human development.


Location: Ordos, China Typology: Museum
Site Area: 27,760 sqm Building Area: 41, 227 sqm Building Height: 40 m

Directors: Ma Yansong, Yosuke Hayano, Dang Qun
Design Team: Shang Li, Andrew C. Bryant, Howard Jiho Kim, Matthias Helmreich, Linda Stannieder, Zheng Tao, Qin Lichao, , Sun Jieming, Yin Zhao, Du Zhijian, Yuan Zhongwei, Yuan Ta, Xie Xinyu, Liu Weiwei, Felipe Escudero, Sophia Tang, Diego Perez, Art Terry, Jtravis B Russett, Dustin Harris

Associate Engineers: China Institute of Building Standard Design & Research Mechanical Engineer: The Institute of Shanxi Architectural Design and Research
Façade/cladding Consultants: SuP Ingenieure GmbH, Melendez & Dickinson Architects Construction Contractor: Huhehaote construction Co., Ltd
Façade Contractor: Zhuhai King Glass Engineering CO.LTD

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Dezeen Screen: this movie tours a remote museum in Inner Mongolia, recently completed by Beijing architects MAD. Watch the movie »

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Boston- and Hong Kong-based Rocker-Lange Architects have designed a villa called Inside Out - Outside In for the Ordos 100 project in Inner Mongolia, China.

The house is one of 100 private residences, all designed by different architects selected by architects Herzog & de Meuron for the Ordos 100 project, which is master planned by artist Ai Wei Wei.

"Especially in the widely varying Mongolian climate, seasonal usages of living areas may change dramatically between the cold winters and warm summers," say Rocker-Lange

"By creating an architecture which is interwoven with its surroundings, we allow the climate to work with the inhabitants, rather than against them."

The following text is from Rocker-Lange:

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Rocker-lange architects are releasing their design of a 1000 square meter Villa in Ordos Inner Mongolia, P.R. China.

The project called "Inside Out|Outside In" is part of the Ordos 100 project and discusses the relationship and fusion of interior and exterior space. Rocker – Lange calls for an architecture of milieu – that an architecture of the circumstances and conditions by which it is surrounded.

An “Architecture of Milieu” no longer strictly distinguishes between its inside and outside – it rather considers itself as always at once on multiple scales inside and outside, as architecture and environment.

Consequently architecture and its environment are thought of not only as “inside” and “outside” of one another, but as zones of possible relationships, in which “inside” and “outside” vary and shift to accommodate changing seasons and usage patterns.

The “Architecture of Milieu” is an architecture of situation rather than site: an indefinitely expandable and differentiable ribbon serves as the continuous organizational strategy, inscribing zones of different degrees of interior and exterior space vanishing the separation between them.

rocker-lange architects where invited to take part in the Ordos 100 project, an urban development of 100 unique villas in the cultural district of the city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia, China. The project was initiated by the Client, Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, the curator FAKE Design, Ai Wei Wei studio, Beijing and architects Herzog & de Meuron, Basel.

While FAKE Design, Ai Wei Wei studio developed the masterplan for the 100 parcels of land, Herzog & de Meuron selected 100 young architects from 27 countries around the globe. The project started in early April of 2008 with an architects’ symposium in Ordos. First villas are expected to be finished in late 2009.

More stories about Ordos 100 on Dezeen:

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Ordos 100 villa by Luca Selva Architects

Ordos villa by Estudio Barozzi Veiga

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Here’s another building for the Ordos 100 project in Inner Mongolia in China, this time designed by Julien De Smedt Architects.

The house is one of 100 private residences, all designed by different architects selected by Herzog & de Meuron for the project, which is masterplanned by artist Ai Wei Wei. See designs for Ordos 100 by Luca Selva Architects and Estudio Barozzi Veiga in our earlier stories.

The following is from JDS:

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JDS_ORDOS BIG BROTHER HOUSE

A house of 1000 m2 can almost be populated rather than inhabited to the least it can entertain quite a party! We have designed a house around the principle of big brother, a place where one can watch and be watched. A house where the circulation is gathered into an atrium of hedonistic leisure and excess, an unavoidable place of pleasure control, that distributes its visitors and party goers in the confines of protected rooms.

Each room flanked on this panopticon atrium is equipped of a private terrace, or dune, that continues the idea of the original desert over the house. Similarly the desert is trapped inside the atrium to form an oasis of sand.

Climatically the house functions like an igloo: the outer rooms act as a layer of extra protection to the indoor atrium space.

The larger space allows for natural ventilation both of itself and of each individual room.

The programmatic layout allows for maximum publicity on the 2 primary levels while the top floor is dedicated to the master bedroom and attendance, turning it almost into an apartment within the house.

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The house is one of 100 private residences, all designed by different architects selected by Herzog & de Meuron for the project, which is masterplanned by artist Ai Wei Wei. See the home design by Estudio Barozzi Veiga for Ordos 100 in our earlier story.

The following text is by Luca Selva Architects:

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ORDOS 100 / Luca Selva Architects, Basle, Switzerland
Phase1 / Plot 5 / ID 082
Short Text

How to build in China?
To build like in Europe or is there to look after specific topics?
And how is to develop a specific architecture?

Referring to these questions the issue for Luca Selva Architects was to work on a strategy for a specific building for China, for Inner Mongolia, for Ordos and for precisely this specific place on the plot of the Master-Plan.

The design-operation was to transform specific landscape beneath the plot in architecture, little lakes and ponds will be transformed into courtyards, dunes into spaces, topography into stores.

This design-strategy points out a specific building closely related to the site. A specific villa with a specific shape, specific spaces and a specific shell in bricks. The villa is landscape transformed into architecture.

On the ground floor are located the ‚enfilade’ of representative spaces and the pool, structured by different transparencies of the courtyards, which bring a soft daylight into the interior spaces.

On the upper floor are situated the master bedroom, five further bedrooms included bathrooms and a library on the gallery, which relates again by a double-high space the entrance with the upper floor.

The construction is made of a specific skin with grey bricks and an inner concrete frame-structure with red bricks as fillings.

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