Renovation of Hutong Houses

choi

Alyssa Abkowitz, Luxury in the Back Alleys of Beijing. Well-heeled expats in search of authenticity are increasingly seeking out the historic courtyard homes that line Beijing’s narrow alleyways. But the century-old structures have their drawnacks; chilly winters and finicky plumbing. Wall Street Journal, Jan 8, 2016.
www.wsj.com/articles/finding-lux ... ng-homes-1452183965

Quote:

"In Beijing, traditional courtyard homes that line narrow alleyways, called hutongs, are increasingly popular among expat families and well-heeled locals. The homes, built by China’s elite ruling class and wealthy merchants, are typically more than 100 years old and often have multiple buildings. Updating the plumbing, heating systems and adding modern kitchens and bathrooms can be costly

"Mr [Quoc] Tran encountered one downside to living in a traditional hutong home: Even in a courtyard home with modern upgrades, Mr Tran felt the chill in the wintertime. 'I knew the hutongs weren’t as insulated as a modern apartment, but I never thought I’d have multiple heaters going in my bedroom and still see my breath in the wintertime,' he says.

"One of the most challenging parts of a courtyard-home renovation is adding proper materials to deal with the city’s frigid winters and humid summers. In some cases, a builder opens up walls to add thick insulation, though that technique decreases the size of the room. Instead many architects and designers opt to add heaters, install double-pane windows or beef up insulation in the roof.

"There are challenges to hutong living. Aside from cold winters, some hutong dwellers are told not to flush toilet paper down the commode; the city’s older, smaller pipes can get backed up.

My comment:
(a) surnames:
(i) The surname Sim in Singapore: 沈 (閩, 潮. 客家)
(ii) The Vietnamese surname Trần  陳
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trần

(b) "Amy Mathieson [no Chinese name], designer at AnyScale Architecture in Beijing"

anySCALE  任督设计
www.anyscale.cn
(c) "Vector Architects founder Gong Dong 董功. Mr Dong, who grew up in Beijing and remembers visiting his grandmother’s home in a hutong more than 40 years ago, is renovating an old workers’ dormitory into a courtyard property"

Vector Architects  直向建筑
www.vectorarchitects.com/
(d) "Two years ago, designer Caroline Odinet [full name in Chinese: 奥蒂内] was tasked with turning a heavy, dark, nearly 7,000-square-foot courtyard home into a light and modern home for a corporate executive and her family. * * * 'So many people are afraid to use color in Beijing,' Ms. Odinet says. 'They say, "Oh that’s the yellow only used by the emperor and that’s the red used at the Forbidden City." That’s changing now.'

(e) I am surprised that Chinese in imperial times did not invent insulation, or copied the concepts from the West.