Tech

This ready-made retrofit system can renovate old homes in just a few hours with a wrench

Leanna Garfield

2016-05-02T17:59:00Z

Many homes in the historic Beijing district of Dashilar are centuries old — some even date back to China's Ming Dynasty. When a home needs renovations, it's often demolished and rebuilt from scratch. Restoration is usually too expensive and time-consuming.

The People's Architecture Office, a local design firm, wanted to find an easier and more efficient way to renovate. So the team designed the Courtyard House Plug-in, a ready-made retrofit that updates a home for the 21st century while still preserving its historical style.

The firm's principal and MIT alum, James Shen, compares it to Ikea furniture: Anyone can renovate a home with the system in a few hours.

The pilot project has won a World Architecture Festival Award, and the firm will showcase it in the Venice Architecture Biennale in late May.

It has received limited funding from the Beijing government, and is still looking for investors. Besides the urban center of Dashilar, the team is also experimenting with the plug-ins in rural villages.

Take a look at the design.

The Courtyard House Plug-in incorporates insulation, wiring, plumbing, windows, doors, walls, and finishes inside panels, Shen tells Tech Insider. The panels are made in a local factory and then shipped to the sites.

First, the team places the lightweight panels up against the home's existing floors and walls, and then the panels are locked together using a hex wrench. The process is much cheaper and easier than demolition or normal renovations, he says. Here's a before and after:

"In areas like Dashilar where buildings have aged badly, both the government and private individuals often opt for tearing down historic homes instead of preserving them, because they lack alternatives," Shen says.

The team has renovated 20 Dashilar homes that lack amenities like insulation, sewage lines, and sometimes kitchens and bathrooms.

These old homes are often freezing in the winter and scorching in the summer, he says.

The project's goal is to maintain the architectural dignity of historic neighborhoods, while updating the homes with modern electric, insulation, and plumbing.

It takes just a few hours to retrofit the homes. "There does not have to be a conflict between upgrading and preserving historic neighborhoods," Shen says.

Design