Located in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, the Urban Art Museum is an intersection between local traditional community life and modern new cities. Its interior is filled with natural light, transforming urban ruins into a poetic public cultural space. Six years ago, the Ordos New City in Inner Mongolia was still a Gobi wilderness, but today it is full of controversy. The controversy itself has placed it at the focus of a wider reflection on contemporary Chinese urban culture. It allows the public to re-understand the connection and contradiction between local traditions and urban dreams, and at the same time, it forces us to understand the deep desire for the future that has erupted from marginalized local cultures. In 2005, after the urban planning map for a new urban area was drawn up on a wilderness, MAD was commissioned by the Ordos Municipal Government to design a museum for the then-unformed new city.

Inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller's "Manhattan Dome", MAD envisioned an abstract shell with a futuristic color, which isolates the inside and outside while providing some protection for the cultural and historical fragments inside, to refute the unknown new urban planning around in reality. The museum floats on a square that undulates like sand dunes, which seems to pay tribute to the natural landscape that has just been replaced by the urban landscape and become history. Citizens play games and rest on the undulating ground; even before the museum was completed, it has become a favorite gathering place for the public, children and families.

The moment you step into the museum, it seems to enter a bright and huge cave. The canyon space that forms a huge contrast with the real world outside is presented in front of you. People shuttle through the corridors in the air, as if they are in a primitive and futuristic Gobi landscape. On the bottom floor of this bright canyon space, citizens can enter and pass through the museum from the two main entrances of the museum without entering the exhibition hall, making the interior of the museum an extension of the open urban space.

The internal streamline is a continuous line swimming in light and shadow, sometimes dark and private, sometimes bright and spectacular. The bridge in the canyon connects the exhibition halls on both sides. People will repeatedly meet on the bridge passing through the air during the tour. The bright diffuse skylight makes the museum hall completely illuminated by natural light. The museum's exterior wall uses a large area of ​​solid wall and aluminum panels to withstand the severe cold and harsh weather in Ordos. A south-facing, sunny indoor garden becomes the center of the office and research space. While providing a good micro-environment, it also provides an isolation layer for the indoor space to reduce heat loss. The construction of the museum brings a moment of respite to a rapidly developing city. People meet in this vibrant space where traditional and contemporary art blend together and start their journey through time and space together.