Photo essay: photographer Raphael Olivier was drawn to the Chinese city of Ordos to capture "spectacular" architecture, but when he arrived he encountered a "ghost town" (+ slideshow).
In the economically prosperous area of Inner Mongolia, close to some of China's largest mines, the Chinese government set about constructing a new city in the early 2000s. The plan for the Kangbashi New Area included giant cultural venues like MAD's completed Ordos Museum, and landmark projects such as Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Wei Wei's Ordos 100 villas.
But when he visited Ordos, Olivier found it partially incomplete and almost empty. In this exclusive essay for Dezeen, he describes his experience of photographing the city's vast structures and deserted streets.
Ordos is a city in Inner Mongolia, China, home to about one million people, which is considered a relatively small city by Chinese standards. It is located in a region rich with natural resources such as gas, coal and rare earth metals, so much that the municipality's GPD is actually one of the highest in the country.
An abandoned villa from Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron's Ordos 100 project
In the early 2000s, the local government decided to build a "New Ordos", just a few kilometres south of the old city, which would be a flamboyant futuristic capital featuring state-of-the-art architecture and acting as a new cultural, political and economical centre for the region. Investment was coloss...