Architecture

MAD's Ordos Museum is finally complete

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The Ordos Museum is nestled in the sandy deserts of Inner Mongolia (image: MAD)
The Ordos Museum is nestled in the sandy deserts of Inner Mongolia (image: MAD)
Light is channeled through the building's luminescent walls, with the metal louvers serving to promote natural ventilation (image: MAD)
Light is channeled through the building's luminescent walls, with the metal louvers serving to promote natural ventilation (image: MAD)
The museum is a spherical shell, intended to act as an enormous incubator of the centuries-old culture and history of the region (image: MAD)
The museum serves as a unique architectural nucleus where art, history, and culture meet (image: MAD)
The museum serves as a unique architectural nucleus where art, history, and culture meet (image: MAD)
The museum is a spherical shell, intended to act as an enormous incubator of the centuries-old culture and history of the region (image: MAD)
The Ordos Museum's polished metal facade rises fluidly over the relatively new city of Ordos (image: MAD)
MAD's design for the Ordos Museum was originally inspired by Buckminster Fuller's "Manhattan Dome" (image: MAD)
The Ordos Museum is a world onto itself in the Mongolian desert (image: MAD)
Light is channeled through the building's luminescent walls, with the metal louvers serving to promote natural ventilation (image: MAD)
View gallery - 11 images

The city of Ordos, nestled in the sandy deserts of Inner Mongolia, is home to a dramatic new museum designed by Chinese architectural firm MAD. Drawing on the image of "the ever rising sun on the grassland," the Ordos Museum's polished metal facade rises fluidly over the new city. Ordos - along with its museum - has been in development over the last six years, evolving from a rural culture into a glistening (and strangely underpopulated) vision of the future.

Designed to form part of a future metropolis, the museum was commissioned by the municipal government of Ordos in 2005. The result is a kind of spherical shell, made to act as an enormous incubator of the centuries-old culture and history of the region. Intended to offer refuge from the rationality of the outside urban city, the museum has become a popular gathering space for locals.

Upon entering the large atrium, visitors are invited to meander through exhibition spaces across six different levels, taking a journey through an unfolding world of light and shadow where the past, present and future intersect. To support this intersection, a curvaceous corridor connects the east and west entrances, creating a seamless connection between the outer and inner worlds.

The museum serves as a unique architectural nucleus where art, history, and culture meet (image: MAD)

Originally inspired by Buckminster Fuller's "Manhattan Dome", MAD's design for the Ordos Museum utilizes a synergetic system where polished metal louvers allow the outer structure to both reflect and dissolve the museum's surroundings, whilst the glazed roof guides light into interior spaces. Once drawn inside, the light is further channeled through the building's luminescent walls, with the metal louvers serving to promote natural ventilation. The effect is a unique architectural nucleus where art, history, and culture meet with the imagination of the future.

View gallery - 11 images
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4 comments
Mr Stiffy
Yeah that top picture looks like my mother in laws big arse when she is bending over...
Denis Klanac
Dag on a rock!
PrometheusGoneWild.com
Reminds me of the Guggenheim Museum in the way it is hated by some but in the end will be seen for what it is; a building that pushes the boundaries of what we can build and what a building can mean.
SGTalon
I have been here. It is amazing. The whole city is stuff like this. And there are no people.
The building right next door is a Library that looks like 60ft tall books on a shelf. It is pretty cool. Nice to know that it is officially opened.