This villa is located in plot ORDOS project.
Architects: Single Speed Design Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China Principals in Charge: Jinhee Park AIA, John Hong AIA/LEED LProject team: Brett Albert, Frederick Peter Ortner, Matt Allen, Caroline Lang, Clara Wong, Bao Wei Structural Engineer: Paul Kassabian, SGH Inc. Design year: 2008 Construction year: 2009-2010 Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox
Early on we noticed that that the overall project siteplan is a cleverly devised urban scale display system for a hundred different architectural experiments. Instead of deploying traditional property lines where no audience can tread, pedestrian easements relentlessly surround every lot. Within the abstraction of the desert, each team is liberated: without formal guilt we are given license to create autonomous product-like villas that can be viewed on all sides by an equally abstract audience.
From this cue, we took the opportunity to create a solution that on one hand references the local environment but also offers a more prototypical attitude toward energy savings – a solution that might be adapted to other building types beyond housing. Eight towers are proposed, each containing a separate and distinct program: an entry tower, a living tower, a food tower, a gym tower, 2 bedroom towers, and 2 bathroom towers. Through the distortion of each tower’s geometry, strategic connections and segregations are created. Organizing the program in this way permits greater efficiency, as only one-third of the towers are occupied and require the consumption of energy at any given time during a diurnal cycle. The organizational system also heightens the experiential differences between rooms that are necessarily similar in size, while creating a high level of porosity between interior and exterior spaces.
