Interior Design Sense

This villa is located in plot #62 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss / NAO
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Project team: Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, E Thaddeus Pawlowski, Kevin Keller, Julia Murphey, Deborah Katz, Ding Liu, Margaux Schindler, Kristen Smith
Renderings: Benjamin Muller & NAO
Construction Consulting: Miodrag Jovanovic, Ruzica Jovanovic, Snezana Litvinovic
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China

Ordos 100 will be a collection of architecture. NAO designed Villa 62 to collect the changing weather of the desert. The outside of Villa 62 can best be described as a continuous shelving system. The skin is designed to keep weather elements on the facade: snow, sand, rain and moss, changing during the four seasons of the year. The shape of Villa 62 is like a contoured hilltop. The hills in inner mongolia are traditionally contoured to collect and preserve ground and water from dispersion into the desert.

As on a hill the Villa 62 is traversed via multiple paths and ways of going up, down or around. There are two main promenades that define the architecture of the villa: one outside and one inside. The outside promenade is an ample and open path along the landscaped areas all the way to the top of the building. The evasive shape of Villa 62 comes from the play between the public and the private areas. Villa remains recognizable in extreme weather and light conditions. Coal and milk are two most important assets of Ordos industry. Wrapped in copper elements Villa 62 will go through stages of color change from orange to green, and then eventually turn black and have a color of coal. The interiors of Villa 62 will remain milky white.

This villa is located in plot #71 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: RSVP
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

While the search for paradigms in architecture is not a recent one, the conscious pursuit of utopia seems to be another species in danger of extinction at a moment when architecture and God are rumored to no longer exist. Still, when faced with the challenge of designing one of 100 villas in the middle of Inner Mongolia–in the context of the exiting pragmatism of the contemporary Chinese architectural production–we decided to relocate our faith in architecture in terms of the discipline itself. We removed ourselves from any sarcastic, ironic or cultural contextual position in order to “Design” a house that will not only respond to the program but also to a more abstract order of complexities.

Because our site culminates the perspectival axis framed by the main street, we decided to lift the house in order to allow the landscape and views to go through, while idealizing the building in its detachment from the ground.

We separated the ludic programmatic components and buried them inside the landscape, objectifying the private wing as a floating element. Finally we proceeded to rotate the upper bar to allow both the main living area and master suite a generous southern orientation. This spatial and formal maneuver generated an open courtyard that connects both the underground and the hovering components of the Villa Long. The name is meant to evoke both the dwelling occupying the longest lot, but also symbolically, the “dragon” as a concept and a provider of meaning.

In terms of language, we developed a mathematical model based on a module that is rotated and displaced and a scaled skin of pre-cast concrete panels with a slight angle that orient the bedroom windows towards the south. The house will be build with a double layer of exterior concrete with brick interiors in order to properly respond to the extreme weather conditions of the area. We are also proposing green systems like geothermal and low consume artifacts to ensure a minimal environmental impact and energy consumption.

Architects: HHF Architects + Ai WeiWei
Location: Salt Point, New York, USA
Design Team: HERLACH HARTMANN FROMMENWILER & AI WEIWEI with Tom Strub, Fumiko Takahama
Structural Engineering: Crawford & Associates, Hudson, NY
Construction Management: Crawford & Associates, Hudson, NY
Design year: 2006-2007
Construction year: 2007-2008
Client: Christophe W. Mao / Chambers Fine Art
Budget: US $321,700
Constructed Area: 373 sqm
Photographs: Iwan Baan

The Artfarm is located near Salt Point in upstate New York (1.5h drive from the City), on the site of an existing private residence, built in the 80ies. The client is an art collector and owner of Chambers Fine Art, a well known gallery located in New York City and Beijing and which is specialized in contemporary chinese art.

The building is designed as a gallery for a professional art collection. On the interior it’s subdivided into different sized showrooms, an office space and spaces designated to store art.

The outer shape is a consequence of the used pre-engineered and easy to assemble type of steel building, which often gets used for agricultural purposes in that area. With ist abstract metallic appearance the structure becomes an equal member of a whole groupe of sculptures which are spread out in the landscape. The three volumes are put on a solid concrete slabs, which follow the existing grade on the site. The different levels are connected through a continues cascading ramp in the middle axis. This middle hallway with its ramp works as access for all spaces, allows an easy way of exchanging big pieces of art between storage and showrooms and works at the same time as a picture gallery.

Approaching the Artfarm building from outside you don’t know what’s expecting you on the inside. Even though there are only three windows existing to the north (and the end of each hall, above the middle ramp, this is the only visual connection to the outside and allows a view into the wood), the building with its pure white interiors is astonishing bright on the inside. The massive concrete floor and the white shiny PVC batt insulation are creating a quiet and cool space. For delicate goods such as paintings etc. consistent indoor temperatures are needed, which is a challenge in an area with such enourmous change in temperatures.

With the concept of an hermetic closed and insulated envelope, the existing heating and cooling needs only to conserve the climate and support it when needed. This seems to work well, during the first summer the cooling had never to be turned on, even on really hot days it was comfortable and cool on the inside.

This villa is located in plot #46 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: Johnston Marklee & Associates
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Pincipals in charge: Sharon Johnston AIA, Mark Lee
Project Architect: Anton Schneider
Project team: Owen Merrick, Midori Mizuhara, Jonathan Raz
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China

The design of House House emerges from an interest in finding the most elemental model for a city. As a type, the gable roofed shed is one that transcends cultures and civilization.

The instant this house proliferates bears the seed for the basic model of settlement.

Considering pragmatic constraints, the siting of the house is driven by the need to situate a large building on a small lot with close proximity to adjacent structures.

By situating the house obliquely to the lot and always exposing double facades to the main views, the primary image of House House is present at every angle but never the same.

Clad with brick in its entirety, the design evokes the stability and stillness of a single building as well as the dynamism of its proliferation.

The internal organization of the house is driven by the notion of a double house, where public and private domains interlock around light filled voids.

From the exterior, the house is divided in plan. Internally, the double use between public and private is divided in section.

The ground level contains the most public programs, the second level contains the semi-public use, and the third level contains the most private rooms, where the interface with the roofline allows each room to become a house in itself.

Along with the basement, the levels are connected by a light filled atrium. The strategy for apertures results from the anticipation of the surrounding development and the choreography of internal moments, which migrate in plan and section concomitantly with circulation to erode traditional front/back and top/bottom planning organizations. As one walks through the house, the apertures frame different views of the landscape and surrounding houses. On the exterior, the various positions and depths of the apertures serve to simultaneously dematerialize and reinforce the visual weight of the house.

Suspended between stasis and dynamism, introversion and extroversion, isolation and community, and past and future, House House breeds familiarity while suggesting the exceptional, reflecting the logic of the masterplan and the spirit of the development.

This villa is located in plot #70 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: Sou Fujimoto Architects
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

I propose a primordial place to live before a notional ‘house’ became a ‘house;’ when it was uncongealed to be all at once a house, a city, a garden, a forest, a prairie, the natural and the artificial. It is analogous to the ruins of ancient cities, to the natural landscapes, to the network of neural activities in a stimulated mind, and to the structure of the Universe.

Not an Object, but a Field of Relationships

A house is not an object.

A house is the totality of frequencies registered as a place of living before differentiating into a house, a city, a garden, a forest, and a prairie.

The masterplan, a collection of demarcated plots and residential volumes, was reinterpreted as a nebulous field of interrelationships similar to a weather chart. Instead of “one object per one plot,” various spatial gradations begin to emerge within the plot. Surrounding contexts and complexities of their reciprocal influence are given a form. I speculate a condition in between architecture and landscape, exteriority and interiority.

Telescopic Vessel by Walls of Voids

To be a house and to be a garden, to be open and to be closed, interiorized exterior, exteriorized interior, continuity and discontinuity, domesticity and urbanity. To be natural and to be artificial; to produce a place that incorporates these discrepant antinomies, I propose a telescopic vessel by walls of voids.

Throughout the plot, the walls are positioned like a spiral. However, these simultaneously are not walls. These are walls of voids with countless openings. Space fluctuates with the openings’ sizes, forming spaces that manifest the gradations within the plot envisioned as a field of relationships.

Between those walls, various rooms and gardens intermingle as they fuse into one another. The feeling of a large expanse coupled with the feel of a comfortable shelter, results in a scale that transforms with use and creates rich depths by multiplicity of inside and outside. This also generates diverse relationships with the surrounding environ as it is simultaneously opened and closed.

This villa is located in plot #26 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: R&Sie(n)
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Architects in Charge: Francois Roche, Stephanie Lavaux, Toshikatsu Kiuchi
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

Preamble

…. this territory is Agharti. It extends through the undergrounds from the whole world, starting from Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. This territory comes from time or the two continents East and West formed an only one territories. This underneath world is lit by an intense unreal light coming from the plants. The citizens of this strange underground civilization undertake what pushes and appears on the surfaces of the earth’s crust, like the trees and grass.

Legend reported by Ferdynand Ossendowski, Beast, Men and Gods, Through
Mongolia, 1929-1921

————–

R&Sie propose the continuation of this legend, to develop a topography which connects these two universes and which articulate the relation between two climates, one outdoor, dry, sandy and windy, and the other luminous, greens, and protected in interiorities.

Trickling of water

Water and its collecting are generating morphology of the movement of ground. The basin is not only one place of baths but it is the apparatus from which the uses, circulations and the life in the project are articulated. Water is invaluable in this part of China, this proposal assumes the scarcity in a crucible of it, in a sophisticated case.

Reflective, undulating and vibrating surface will create moreover one contribution of shade and light and will qualify spaces with the circumference of the basin.

Proliferating garden and ceremony of bath

The interior atmosphere is luminous and green. A winter garden which is rolled up around the basin colonizes all spaces and introduces an idea of a landscape. Mousses and bamboos pushes in the cavities and the inhabitants slip through these zones fresh and luminous as a ceremony of bath in the dry desertic climate.

Articulation of use

The project proposes three levels like as many contrasted environments:

- Level 0 / Day life around the basin / direct light by the central crater / exuberant hydroponics winter garden / wellness center and sauna related to the inner basins and external one / zone of life for workers in direct relationship with spaces of services, light for workers apartment by `’English court”.

- Level 1/ Entrance and public access through the green landscape articulating the three levels and allowing the fluidity of the access to the basins /zenithal light through the vegetation /Around the crater, spaces more private, as the Lounge with soft light and intimated area /access points of spaces of night.

- Level 2/ Spaces only dedicated to the night.

Topography of glazed tiles blue-green

The geometry of the movement of ground made a roof, diffracted in multiple brilliant tiles, simulating a water film ”after the rain”. The coloring of the tiles, parameterized with a random script according to the zones reintroduces variability in the repetition and blurs thus perception of each square element. The tiles are of dimension 150×150 mm, aspect clearer in the crater and more sandy on the limits of the parcel. Their number is about 30000 units.

Geometrical, high degradation and low definition

The process of degradation geometrical can be reversed. That implies a cost of construction rising and a knowledge of contractors more sophisticated (curves surfaces). The cursor of definition can be proposed like the free choice of the client, according to the degree of his investment.

This villa is located in plot #06 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: MOS
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Project leaders: Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

We based our proposal upon a traditional Chinese courtyard house typology. Each room and function is housed within an individual building volume, which are connected at the corners to remove the need for hallways and excessive circulation space.

The relationship of the house to the sun is critical. In a climate such as Ordos’ which experiences hot summers and cold winters, it is the architectural form which integrates the effects of the sun’s light and heat with the comfort of the occupied spaces. The house controls heat and light through two primary aspects: window placement and the solar chimney.

In the wintertime when the sun is lower and the need for internal heat greater, the windows and skylights, oriented towards the south, west and east, allow sunlight to enter. Passive heating is achieved as the masonry walls and floors absorb the accompanying solar radiation which then is released to heat the spaces.

In the summer, when the sun is higher and thetemperatures greater, it is more important to keep the occupied spaces cool. The deep window sills help to shade the interior spaces from the higher summer sun while still allowing in ambient light. Because heat rises, the solar chimney acts to draw hot air up and away from the occupied spaces, and the hot air is further removed through the operable skylights. Lower, cooler air is then drawn into the space at the occupancy level, further helping to cool the rooms. Furthermore, the masonry walls and floors slow and decrease the transmission of solar radiation into the interior spaces.

This villa is located in plot #80 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: Rocker-Lange
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Project leaders: Ingeborg M. Rocker & Christian J. Lange
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm

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. Especially in the widely varying Mongolian climate, seasonal usages of living areas may change dramatically between the cold winters and warm summers; by creating an architecture which is interwoven with its surroundings, we allow the climate to work with the inhabitants, rather than against them.

This villa is located in plot #51 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: HHF Architects
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Project Team: HERLACH HARTMANN FROMMENWILER with Nicole Baron, Daichi Takano, Kohsuke Uesugi and Christian Weyell
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Site Area: 1,521 sqm
Constructed Area: 925 sqm

Context and shape of the building

The physical context for the Ordos 100 project is limited to climatical conditions and some few regulations by the master plan done by FAKE Design. Within Ordos 100, this project is simply the HHF house. It’s making an issue out of the fact that 99 other architects are simultaneously and independently planning 99 houses with an identical program within the same master plan. The outer shape of the building and the shed roof is directly developed as an embossed writing of the letters HHF, acronym of the architects and name of the office. This logo can only be read from the air or in the model. From the street level the writing is never readable. From the ground, the shape of the roof is rising above the surrounding vegetation, reflecting the diverse light situations and various shapes of the rooms inside the building.

The outside area is planned as an extension of the nearby park. Because of the extreme climatical conditions and the low construction costs, the building is kept as compact as possible.

Construction and technical aspects

To guarantee earthquake protection even with all the empty spaces on the second floor, every floor slab is supported separately. Each of these floor slabs is lying on the central concrete core and on one outside wall, which is going without cease from the foundation to the roof. To stabalize the building, the concrete walls next to the stairs are built as buttress walls. The external wall is a rear ventilated brick construction, whereas the inner wall is a combination of a cast-in-place concrete framework with a brickwork infill. The outer shell is an exposed brickwork within a concrete frame. From the roof the rainwater is brought down in downpipes, located between concrete pilaster strips. ‘The shafts for all technical installations are integrated into the central core. In the basement the pipes are collected in a suspended ceiling, from where they are brought to the installation zone.

In the basement there is also a central air-conditioning for the whole building. The intake for the fresh air is removed from the house and integrated in the garage box. In the house the air is distributed from the core of the building.

This villa is located in plot #89 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: nArchitects
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Project team: Eric Bunge, Mimi Hoang; Dominique Gonfard, Hubert Pelletier, Alice Wong (Project Manager), Adam Vana
Engineers: Ove Arup NY; MEP (Mahadev Raman), Structures (Markus Schulte, Thomas Claassen)
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm

Conceived as an Inner House within an Outer House, our villa combines two distinct spatial and thermal conditions. The Inner House is designed as a compact, essential house, containing 60% of the project’s total volume and 75% of its area. Outer House provides a protective enclosure, and a unique series of interconnected, voluminous, sky-lit spaces. This layered strategy responds to the extreme swings of the Ordos desert climate with efficiencies in climatic and material strategies. At the same time, Villa-Villa provides its inhabitants with a variety of modes of living, as they occupy a house that expands and contracts according to the seasons.

Inner House: In this domestic core, three single-storey volumes stack on top of each other, resulting in a series of terraces on the roofs of the volumes below. Each Inner House floor is optimized in its shape, orientation and organization for particular patterns of living. The first floor privileges connections to the landscape and the spaces of the Outer House. Experienced in the round, the second floor’s open configuration connects views to the outside across a continuous living space. Functions are positioned according to solar exposure, with the kitchen and breakfast area on the Eeast, the dining room sheltered from the western sun on the South, and the living room with views of the sunset on the West. Iin the sleeping quarters on the 3rd floor, four bedroom suites face different directions, each with a window on one of the four facades. The roof is designed as a fourth floor, stacked upon the volumes below, and optimized in shape and orientation to house a photovoltaic array.

Outer House: Gardens are incorporated into the diverse spaces and terraces of the Outer House, rather than exposed to the extreme climate and high rate of evaporation of Ordos. The material, light and spatial qualities of these intermediate outdoor-like spaces contrast dramatically with those of the Inner House. While warm woods, stone, glass and plaster line its carefully finished rooms, the materials of the Outer House are rougher: brick floor, painted brick walls on the interior, and an exterior surfaced in various brick textures. The single height stacked floors of the Inner House connect to the landscape horizontally through large window openings. In contrast, the spaces of the Outer House are varied in height, largely opaque, and illuminated by skylights. These opposing atmospheres create a constant fluctuation between inside and outside, side and top light, texture and abstraction.

Climate: Villa – Vvilla expands and contracts with shifting use and changing temperatures. In order to conserve energy, its inhabitants can choose to live mostly in the compact Inner House during the winter. This heated and conditioned zone is protected with 60mm of batt insulation, while the Outer House is in turn wrapped with 120mm of rigid insulation, and heated mostly by passive means. Our engineers project that this approach will maintain temperatures in the Outer House at a ~30% differential between the Inner House and the outdoors. Inhabitants can choose to further warm this intermediate space with radiant heating provided in the first floor slab, or by simply opening the single glazed sliding doors separating it from the Inner House. During the rest of the year, domestic activity can cross this thermal threshold, flowing from interior to outdoor-like interior and on to the outdoors.