ordos

ordos desert, near site of the ordos 100

While I have a great deal of respect for at least some of the architects (LTL, for instance) involved in the Ordos project (and perhaps they will make something more of it than is apparent on the surface; that, after all, is what good architects should be able to do), today's Archidose image does little to allay the concerns raised in May by Lebbeus Woods:

A hint of trouble appears when we notice that Ai Weiwei's design company is called Fake Design. Sure enough, when we look at his overall plan for the development, we find that it copies American suburban tract developments from the 50s, say, in California's San Fernando valley. Cf. the movie, "The Two Jakes." Sand-blown, treeless, lifeless for all human purposes, but soon to contain "your Dream House"-- just sign here! The picture published in the New York Times of the invited architects surveying their desolate sites is absurdly comic and at the same time sad. What must be going through their minds? Is this the Weissenhof Siedlung for the new age? Can I make great architecture here? Will I be mentioned in next Times article? Or, did I come halfway around the world for this? Am I here as an architect, or as a pawn in Ai's latest art game?

The idea of building large private houses on three-quarter acre plots jammed together without regard for the spaces between or the relationship of one house to the next must be unsettling to many of the invitees, especially considering the history of American suburbs. Some have questioned the lack of even basic design or ecological guidelines in the planning, and may be wondering, too, if Ordos, of all the rapidly developing places on the planet, really needs a retro typology--however updated and upgraded--as the most visible symbol of its future. It would be a more hopeful harbinger of the future not only for this city, but the field of architecture in general, if a number of the Ordos 100 architects banded together and came up with a coordinated overall plan and insisted that it be adopted. And, if it were not, they would simply decline the opportunity.

Viewing the settlement as a whole as in the model, the houses seem not significant (as one might hope a collection of architects such as this could provide), but baubles scattered on the surface of the planning equivalent of a dead carcass; as Diego Penalver put it in the comments on Lebbeus's post: "this project seems like an architectural collection of a sort, where all architects have been called to solve nothing, or a very conventional program at best, an architectural figure show". While the search for beautiful forms is by no means a bad thing (in and of itself and considered out of context, I would argue that it is in fact one of the grandest things humans can do), it is hard not to find, in the concentration of the energies of so many talented architects on a project that does nothing to confront the enormous challenges facing China[1], a confirmation of the charge that architecture is an inessential discipline, of use only to those with the wealth or power to buy its decorative services. (And it is because I think that charge should and could be inaccurate that I find Ordos somewhat distressing).

[1] see NYTimes: "A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia..."; the spatial organization of Ordos implicitly endorses the continuance of the sort of urban pattern and living arrangements that is responsible for this 'noxious cocktail'.