Gulou Hutongs saving the old beijing and its way of life

The word ‘hutong’ came 700 years ago from the Mongolian language, meaning ‘water well’, a place where people settle for the water. Today in Beijing, it means a small alleyway or lane. They are typical of the Old part of the city and are formed by lines of siheyuan, ancient Chinese courtyard houses, in which most Beijing residents used to inhabit. Inseparable with the material fabric and space arrangement is the ‘hutong culture’. This is the repository of believes, values, rituals, orders, social codes and so forth, of the community. Nowadays, hutongs in Beijing are less than 1.000 and most of them have lost their basic nature.  The Old city is gradually vanishing. Many historical buildings are torn down. How can this present set of conditions be considered as an opportunity to forge new design solutions? The hutongs do not need utopian visions or massive projects, but rather common sense and answers for basic and tangible problems. The design solutions proposed are three strategies aimed to solve or drastically reduce  three main issues through systems of punctual interventions inside the courtyard units of the area. MARIA FRANCESCA DI ALESSANDRO  Currently based in Milan, she spent the last year researching about the Hutongs life after being a student of Tsinghua University in Beijing. Graduated from Polytechnic of Milan as architect, she studied also in Rome and Oxford. In China she worked for remixStudio, a young firm involved in hutongs rehabilitation. She is co-founder and art director of Timmerman, an art collective that creates testing environments across multiple media, combining music, visual arts, performances through online and offline spaces