The museum has become the main attraction of the projected center of Ordos, a new city that the local authorities, in the wake of the economic boom, have decided to fill with expensive "branded" architecture. It was built a few kilometers from the original center, on the sands of the Gobi Desert. The master plan was conceived as the embodiment of a poetic image: the sun rising over the pastures. However, in the implementation of all this poetry, not a trace remained: the city received a rigid linear layout with the main square in the center and did not take into account the real needs of residents at all. As a result, people did not want to move there, and in a few years the city, designed for 1 million, was populated by only a few thousand people.
The museum was seen by the architects as a kind of reaction to this failed master plan: it takes the form of a natural irregular "core", contrasting with the strict geometry of the surrounding buildings. Its pulsating mass is a shell that completely isolates the interior space from the urban reality. The structure is wrapped in polished metal shutters, cut here and there with "organic" windows. The main lighting comes through the skylight: daylight is spread through the building through reflective wall coverings. Blinds are used for natural ventilation.
Outside, the circular volume of the museum, erected on a hill with wide staircases, resembles ancient burial mounds. The main entrance is like the mouth of a cave, pinned down from above by the mass of a mountain. The interior contrasts with the harsh external appearance, the dominance of white and the free expression of forms. Curvilinear walls, cut by rounded openings, divide it into several exhibition halls that open into the central atrium.
N. K.
