After years of contemplating expansion options in Beijing, a unique site in a most fantastic area (by our standards) became available. Construction began in May 2014, with an opening scheduled for early 2015. This is an active construction site at the moment, so pictures and commentary will go up in a fairly delayed fashion.. But please stay tuned, and feel free to email us any questions or comments along the way.
finishing up concrete
The last remnants of red brick are now neatly hidden under the warmth of the grey concrete.
And again, yet another main hutong entrance shot. Expect many of these over the next few months
Looking out from the NW room’s balcony entrance
Double-time on the dining room
The entrance to the NW room won’t look so barren later, but still cool now
The last night of concrete work takes place under some incandescent warmth. A view from outside we can start getting used to now.
other mohui
Day and night — about 4 days of work to completely cover all messy redness with some nice grey concrete.
Check out the entranceway from the restaurant. There will be glass there soon
Inspecting his evening work
Relaxing on a pile of rubble after finishing up the southern garden wall’s concrete
Entrance Mohui
Gazing out towards the entrance from the lobby we can start getting some ideas of what the view will begin to look like. It’s quite a big view to cover as well: 2500x3000mm of glass. You don’t see any glass coming just yet, but at least some of these red bricks will finally begin disappearing.
The mighty entrance wall
Looking into the entrance and beyond at the private garden
Finally — Here comes the concrete, slowly peeling its way down the wall
Concrete Slabbing
Saving both time and money, we’ve gone with large concrete slabs for upper-area roofing that can support people, but not full floor structures. These things are huge, and heavy. A total of 18 workers were needed to lift each one up to the second floor!
Restaurant main entrance
A few slabs resting above the dining room
The dining room.. The remaining 6 square meters will be glass instead of concrete!
In the kitchen
Inside the Lookout
More Grey Bricks
Here the worker is putting on the finishing touches of a grey brick wall that only functions to block the ugliness from one neighbour. The new wall is especially nice in the late afternoon sun!
Here’s the wall from down below. Next to it is the back of the kitchen.
