By FRED A. BERNSTEIN

ORDOS, China - Not long ago, residents of this region 560 kilometers west of Beijing lived in elaborate tents called yurts. Now, with a population of 1.5 million, many live in homes comparable to those in any big city. According to Bao Chongming, the regional vice-mayor, they have the second highest per-capita income in China (trailing only Shanghai).
And last month, a large group of design teams from 27 countries descended on Ordos for five days at the behest of a local tycoon. Cai Jiang, who made his money in coal and dairy and has lately turned to real estate, had commissioned 100 firms to design individual houses, each large enough to include amenities like servants’ quarters and indoor pools, as part of a billion-dollar “cultural district” he is building here.
At a time when housing markets across the West are contracting and American architects’ billings are at their lowest point in 12 years, according to the American Institute of Architects, Mr. Cai was offering his guests a rare chance to build big - and paying them in bundles of cash.
“For young architects who don’t usually get to build very much, this is monumental,” said Michael Meredith, who arrived from New York with his partner, Hilary Sample.
Ordos, in the desert of Inner Mongolia, has rapidly become wealthy, largely because of huge deposits of coal.
Officials decided that the old urban center, Dongsheng, was too crowded and set out a few years ago to build a new one, Kangbashi, 30 kilometers away; its population is expected to reach 100,000 by the end of 2008 and five times that number by 2010. And it is sprouting satellite developments, including Mr. Cai’s cultural district.
Mr. Cai, who understands a bit of English but speaks through an interpreter, said he conceived the Ordos 100, as the residential development is called, as a way to raise both the region’s profile and the aesthetic knowledge of its newly affluent residents. At 40, he knows something about the affluent life he is promoting: he has a mansion in Baotou as well as homes in Beijing and Shanghai .
In 2007 he approached Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the Swiss architects, to help him build 100 houses. (Thanks to their “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium in Beijing, Herzog & de Meuron are superstars in China.) Rather than design the villas themselves, Mr. Herzog and Mr. de Meuron opted to enlist 100 firms from around the world, bringing in their friend Ai Weiwei, a well-known Chinese artist, to organize the project.
Of the 100 teams that accepted the invitation, 28 flew to Ordos in January, to see the site and to meet the client; they returned in April with models of their villas.
Mr. Cai appeared genuinely interested in the architecture he was shown, studying models with Mr. Ai and consulting with engineers . A few hours after the first 28 teams presented their designs, 69 more arrived (a final three were selected later, making an even 100).
Many of the architects seemed almost giddy to be freed from the constraints they face in their home cities, where historic preservation laws combined with the scarcity of building sites means that they seldom get to design buildings from the ground up. Daniel Rosbottom, a 38-year-old partner in DRDH Architects in London, described that city as “a difficult climate for young architects” and Ordos as “a fantastic opportunity to build a quite substantial building really quickly.”
But some architects were worried about the way the project broke from their usual way of working “with context, with a desire to make buildings that are part of the connective tissue of the city,” as Mr. Rosbottom put it.
Mr. Ai, who is known as a provocateur, encouraged the architects to ask questions, though he rarely provided answers.
He was unimpressed with the few houses that had curved walls meant to evoke yurts. “When I see that, I have to take it as a joke,” he said later. After all, Ordos is hardly a tent city. Indeed, Mr. Ai said, pointing to the architects who had traveled thousands of kilometers looking for work: “These days, it’s the architects, dressed in black, who are the tribe of nomads.
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