nARCHITECTS

This 10,000 sq. ft. villa is part of the Ordos 100 project, in which 100 international architects are each designing a villa in a new city center in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. Conceived as a house within a house, Villa-Villa combines two distinct spatial and thermal conditions. The Inner House is designed as a compact, essential house, containing 60% of the project’s total volume and 75% of its area. The Outer House provides a protective enclosure, and a unique series of interconnected, voluminous, sky-lit spaces. This layering responds to the extreme swings of the Ordos desert climate with efficiencies in climatic and material strategies. At the same time, Villa-Villa provides its inhabitants with a variety of modes of living, as they occupy a house that expands and contracts according to the seasons.