The Ordos 100 project was envisioned by our client to develop a residential complex, as a way to raise both the region’s profile and the aesthetic acumen of its newly affluent residents. In 2007 he approached Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the Swiss architects, to help him build 100 villas. (Thanks to their “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium in Beijing, Herzog & de Meuron are superstars in China.)
Rather than design the villas themselves, Mr. Herzog and Mr. de Meuron opted to enlist 100 firms from around the world, bringing in their friend Ai Weiwei, the wellknown Chinese artist, to organize the project. By the end of 2007, they have found collection 100 up and coming architects from 27 countries around the world. Amongst the 100 international architects, ZADL was much honored to be chosen by Herzog and de Meuron to participate in this project.
In designing our lot (number 94), ZADL’s approach was to explore and identify the type of family that would live there. In the process, we learned that recently, Ordos is very rich with seemingly endless flow of money from natural resources. It has rapidly become wealthy, largely because of huge deposit of coal, the primary fuel for China economic expansion. In fact Ordos is the second fastest growing city in China only trailing after Shanghai.
We believe that the villa will be occupied by a newly affluent resident, or “Nouveau Riche” or “New Money”. In our opinion the Nouveau Riche of Ordos would like a house that is resembles a house or “familiar to the eye” as a house. It was strongly against recreating a museum or a very much modern type of house.

Creating the Familiar image
The generation of the form is geared toward the creation of a “familiar” image of a house. Each façade of the house is composed by a collage of different conventional rooflines which associated to the embedded program of the house.
All facades are connected with a slope roof system, with the goal to preserve the familiarity.
The Villa 094 is designed with the premise of adopting Chinese courtyard house typology into Inner Mongolian setting. The harsh weather of Ordos requires the house to have an inward orientation. Contrary to courtyard houses, which horizontally spread, the villa efficiently optimizes its footprint by introducing two main strategies: having the family room, as the conceptual courtyard, and elevated garden in upper level for private domain.
The family room is located on the center of the villa and functions as the main hub of the house. Elevated garden provides a private courtyard condition to serve the bedrooms and provide natural light to the family room below. This private courtyard contributes for generating perception of multiple massing of the villa.
In conjunction with these two strategies, the villa maintains two different orientations: true north-south and street orientation. The difference of these orientations generates gaps and wedges which are exploited to create circulation spaces, openings, overhangs, ceilings and skylights.
Typical modular Chinese brick (both grey and red) masonry will be used as the main material for exterior and interior walls and they are exposed on the outer skin of the house and painted white on the interior. Main structural system will be concrete framing. Roofing will be laminated asphalt shingle over concrete decking. For air conditioning, radiant heating system will be installed in most of the floors.