House of Passages / Chaoffice

The project site is located within the Taihang Mountains west of Beijing. Along with “House of Steps”, it is one of two projects we have recently undertaken in Junxiang Village. Relative to the location of “House of Steps”, the original site could be described as chaotic. The site, a yard, is nestled within a narrow hutong no more than 2 meters in width. The scale of the entire site is 9 meters x 20 meters. Several existing buildings and structures inhabited and filled the yard. A building to the west measured just 2.4 meters. The closest distance between buildings was less than 1 meter. When in the yard one could experience something like walking through several small “passages”; all buildings isolated from one another. The original conditions were far from what could be described as a comfortable place to live.