This update is by Christina Zhou, Elsa Wang, Noelle Herring
Residential Heating in 承泽园: A Study of Comparisons
On the fourth floor of the Tsinghua Art and Design building, perched atop lockers next to long windows that span the entire length of one wall of the building’s inside courtyard, I write. Outside, there is an array of matching windows on each of the other three courtyard walls. These windows are not identically, as many are cracked open to varying degrees.
While summer draws to a close and Beijing enters its most comfortable season, the pollution remains light, assisted in part by a quiet breeze, yet in just a few months, a dry chill will descend upon the city, casting some areas in severe cold, and a few in severe heat. As one Tsinghua student described, sometimes the dorms located on higher floors of the dormitory building are heated to such an extent that students want to open the windows in the middle of winter, showing a lack of efficiency in existing HVAC design.