Sunday Escape - Villa 058

Ordos is a futuristic, spooky, creepy city. Located in Mongolia region within the borders of China, about 500 kilometers west of Beijing, hiding underground about one-sixth of the entire Chinese coal. The money derived from the extraction of this substance and the growing capitalist ambition of the Eastern Government have made this place the perfect set where achieving an impressive urban project, which provided for the beginning of the millennium, the construction of a new residential area for the expected arrival 300 thousand new residents. 

Unfortunately in Ordos those people are never reached, transforming it into a "ghost town", full of modern, futuristic and uninhabited architectural structures, symbol of an exaggerated speculation. Here in this spooky place is Villa 058. It is a deceptively simple-looking building, with the face completely covered with a mirror coating that reflects its surroundings, creating a strange camouflage effect which makes it present and absent at the same time. 

In this house, designed by the Swiss architects Christ&Gantenbein Studio, living spaces are organized around a private courtyard in the center of which is planted a single tree that thanks to the play of mirrors seems to multiply in a forest. Inside the only materials used are white plaster, terrazzo and concrete, which together color the extended area of different shades of gray, illuminated by the light coming through oversized windows. Villa 058 is a unique project which, thanks to the fragmented geometry of its volume and the mirror coating provides absolute privacy, absolute peace, a zen retreat, futuristic from the busy life of the city life.