Blended Spaces in Beijing’s Hutong Fabric: The Case of Baitasi Hutongs

Abstract

This paper examines the urban typology of the remaining courtyard houses (siheyuan) and traditional alleys (hutongs) in Beijing, focusing on how the expansion of the metropolis has transformed their spatial and scalar organization, reconfiguring both interior domestic spaces and exterior spatial practices.

The paper adopts the Baitasi (白塔寺) area as a case study to explore how everyday living practices continuously reshape the use of space, generating spatial configurations that appear to evolve in response to residents’ modes of inhabitation, blurring the boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces. As a result, outdoor spaces are increasingly reshaped through informal activities, giving rise to a constellation of micro-public spaces for gathering, generating new loci of sociability between the inhabitants. Small plazas emerge at road crossings, in the interstices between walls, along narrow passageways, and even on the thresholds and stairways of dwellings, thereby transforming the urban fabric through everyday practices.

Within the broader context of hutong transformation, this contribution considers the role of programmed urban regeneration initiatives, such as the Beijing Design Week, hosted for multiple editions in the Baitasi area, in these transformation processes. These small-scale, incremental interventions have positioned the neighbourhood as a laboratory for experimental design strategies and forward-looking scenarios of urban regeneration, revealing the latent potential of historic urban fabrics to accommodate contemporary spatial practices.