ORDOS100

I'm almost two weeks back in the states and finally getting around to posting some links related to the ORDOS100 project.

I was there representing Keller Easterling Architects. This was the third and final meeting in Chinese Inner Mongolia, bringing together offices from all over the world, each asked to design one out of 100 villas on a tabula rasa site near the Gobi Desert. The best introduction to the project, and the best sketch of the general mood at these meetings, is Fred Bernstein's New York Times Article.

There are a lot of photos on flickr. Mine, and some other folk's: UNI's, Multiplicities', Michael Schoner's ... in between presentations and meals and ad hoc hallway conversations, the participants would gather around the large 1:250 site model like proud parents, taking as many photographs as possible. Movingcities.org was there, as embedded journalists, their comprehensive coverage is here.

There is, of course, criticism. Lebbeus is skeptical. Eyal Weizman and Teddy Cruz seem to have declined. There is also, of course, an archinect thread.

The best place to see all of the houses is probably Ai Weiwei's blog. Warning: these links are to a Chinese website, they're fairly image heavy, and they've sometimes crashed firefox:

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_473f90ad0100a71s.html

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_473f90ad0100a71n.html

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_473f90ad0100a715.html