ORD / Big Brother House

A project with little restrictions leads to many questions: Should a new residential development composed of 100 houses, each 1000 square meters and designed by a separate architect be considered a neighborhood or an oddity?  Should we design a house to live in, a weekend retreat or a hotel suite?  What kind of family structure inhabits a 37 spaces house?  Can the Mongolian climate be utilized as a potential catalyst for design? Such a house could almost be populated rather than inhabited.  At the very least, it could certainly entertain quite a party!  JDS has designed a house around the concept of Big Brother: a place where one can see and be seen, a place where the circulation space is gathered around an atrium of hedonistic leisure and excess, an unavoidable place of pleasure and control, distributing its visitors and party goers into the confines of protected rooms.  Each such room is equipped of a private terrace or dune, which continues the idea of the original desert over the entire house.  Similarly, the desert is entrapped inside the atrium to form an oasis of sand. Climatically, the house functions like an igloo: the outer rooms act as a layer of extra protection for the atrium space, while the atrium allows natural ventilation for both itself and the individual rooms. The programmatic layout allows for maximum publicity on the 2 primary levels, while the top floor is dedicated to the master bedroom, turning it into an apartment within the house. Technically the building functions as a giant concrete vault.  Once competed the projects locks into one total structural system.  Each level is structurally pinned to the next with reinforced concrete where the rooms are expressed at the overlap between floors.  The large amount of concrete in the structure will also act as a giant heat sink, allowing for the intake of heat during the day and then dissipating it slowly throughout the night. Materially, we have chosen a reflective aluminum panel.  This will highlight to colors of the neighboring homes and surrounding landscape.  The metal skin will act as a heavily insulated rain screen over the concrete structure.