A currently fashionable theme – and real-estate attraction – in the world of Chinese architecture is the renovation of hutongs, those alleys of popular dwellings of yore, closely huddled around a courtyard, especially in the country’s capital. Ma Yansong, founder of the design studio MAD Architects, has joined the trend in his own style, adding to a revamped old house – located right in the heart of Beijing – two sculptural and mirror-surfaced bubbles that, in the manner of the disturbing shiny creations of an Anish Kapoor or a Jeff Koons, reflect the surroundings to produce a mirage of sorts: a visual fusion of new and old.