Ai Weiwei has become renowned for his political activities and famous as the inventor of the Bird’s Nest stadium in Peking. Working with those same Swiss architects, he devised a major construction project in Inner Mongolia. Screened in combination with So Sorry.
Ordos 100 is a construction project curated by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. One hundred architects from 27 countries were chosen to participate and each design a 1000-square-meter villa to be built in a new community in Inner Mongolia. The 100 villas would be designed to fit a master plan designed by Ai Weiwei.
On January 25, 2008, the 100 architects gathered in Ordos for a first visit to the site. The film Ordos 100 documents a total of three site visits, during which time the master plan and design of each villa was completed. As of this date, the Ordos 100 project remains unrealized (Ai Weiwei Studio).
Programmer Note by Gertjan Zuilhof:
Ordos 100 provides a picture of an Ai Weiwei at the pinnacle of his artistic fame, but not yet in the political hot water that was to give him a different kind of notoriety.
It’s about a grand architecture project in Ordos, a place that still has to be built in Inner Mongolia. Ai Weiwei again works here with the Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron, the team with whom he created the famous Bird's Nest stadium for the Olympic Games.
The film has another protagonist and that is Cai Jiang. He’s the head of the private water company of Inner Mongolia (that has lots of desert) and the project developer on this plan that verges on megalomania. Because not only do hundreds of different international architects each make a different house, the houses, which measure thousands of square metres, are also pretty large. Several of the participating architects interviewed make it clear that they are surprised about this aspect of what is a very special project.
But Ai Weiwei never thinks small and it’s funny to see how some famous architects seek handhold within the grand vision of Ai Weiwei with his familiar nonchalant look and working clothes. However we don’t see much of him in the film.
In the end, the grand project doesn’t get realised. The idea may have been just a little too grand.