Ordos Museum

Previously part of the barren expanse of the Gobi Desert, Ordos was provided a new masterplan for development in 2005. The Ordos Museum was a crucial component of its newly developed public urban space. It functions as a new landmark that narrates the stories of local culture and history. Poised to look as though it is floating over a sand dune, Ordos Museum creates a public plaza, and the project as a whole offers a gathering place for local residents to form a stronger bond with their surroundings.

The Ordos Museum appears to have either landed in the desert from another world or risen out of the desert floor as a mysterious and abstract form. The museum floats over a waving sand hill, which becomes a sloping plaza—an open gesture that welcomes locals.

As visitors enter the museum, they are welcomed into an airy monumental cavernous space with large skylights. This initial cavern links to a canyon that carves out a void between the galleries and the exhibition hall. Visitors move through the skylit space across tectonic bridges and are invited to pass through the base of the central space. These architectural elements together construct an interior space made up of organic forms and free-flowing lines, all of which add to the sense of movement and limitlessness of the visitors’ spatial experience.