New International Architecture Prize from China to Spotlight Young Architect of Great Promise

LOS ANGELES--(Business Wire)--
The Ordos Prize, a new international architecture prize from China, the first
ever from Asia, will honor a young architect at a pivotal point in his or her
career. Qingyun Ma, dean of the University of Southern California School of
Architecture, is the Founding Director and he has brought together leading
global architects to serve as nominators and jury members.

The Ordos Prize is co-sponsored by the City of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, and
by the Jiang Yuan Cultural & Creativity Development Co., Ltd founded by Cai
Jiang, a local entrepreneur in coal, natural gas and agriculture and an
architectural patron. The Ordos Prize is the first architecture prize to award a
commission to design a building in the Jiang Yuan Cultural & Creativity Industry
Zone under development in Ordos. The winner also receives a $20,000 monetary
award and his/her work will be exhibited in the U.S. and Asia.

"Unlike other major prizes that recognize an architect for a significant project
or body of work, The Ordos Prize is the first to honor emerging young talent,"
says Rem Koolhaas, chair of The Ordos Prize Jury and principal of Office of
Metropolitan Architecture based in Rotterdam. "The Ordos Prize winners will be
our next generation of great architects," he adds.

Joining Koolhaas on the jury are Lauren Bon, a Los Angeles artist who intersects
art with public space and urban ecology; Zhiyuan Cui, a philosopher, author and
professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing; Robbie Finkel, a musician and
composer from Montreal, best known for Cirque du Soleil scores; and Dean Ma, who
also is founder/principal of MADA s.p.a.m., a fast-rising architecture firm in
Shanghai..

"The Ordos Prize was created to honor a young architect at the most critical
stage of his or her career. It recognizes great promise in intellectual rigor
and formal brilliance and will be based on both theoretical and built projects,"
Ma notes. "It is this unprecedented opportunity to recognize the emerging stars
in our field that has drawn such distinguished architects to participate."

Candidates for the prize are being nominated by preeminent global architects:
Ben van Berkel, Stefano Boeri, Liz Diller, Jacques Herzog, Thom Mayne, Pierre de
Meuron, Enrique Norten, Kazuyo Sejima, Wang Shu and Robert A. M. Stern.

The Ordos Prize grows out of a commitment to architecture experimentation by the
Jiang Yuan Company. It first drew the eyes of the world to Ordos by teaming with
Herzog and de Meuron, architects of the Bird`s Nest Olympic Stadium, to select
100 young firms from 27 countries to design 100 villas in its creative industry
zone. The Ordos 100 project gave birth to The Ordos Prize.

For more information: www.ordosprize.org

Casey & Sayre, Inc.
Barbara Casey, 310-473-8090

Copyright Business Wire 2009