Beijing needs a new housing typology. As a result of a mass migration that sees twenty million people relocate from the countryside to China’s cities every year, Beijing’s historic hutong neighborhoods no longer function. The courtyard dwellings that once defined the city have been infilled completely: three families now occupy the space meant for one, and the exterior spaces that enabled communities to form within the hutongs no longer exist.

High-rise elevator apartment blocks have become the answer to Beijing’s ever-increasing need for more housing. As a result, residents complain that they now live next to one another without ever becoming neighbors; the social spaces of the hutong have been left out. By contrast, the Vertical Hutong provides a density of 42 dwelling units per acre while developing a high-rise typology that supports the type of social interactions that previously defined Beijing’s hutongs. Instead of elevator lobbies and internal hallways, a “vertical street” crosses an open atrium. Instead of wall to wall apartments, double and triple height winter gardens provide the terminus for the vertical street, opening the buildings to the city and providing the kind of intimate public spaces that support spontaneous interactions between residents.