The Centennial Campus — HKU's 2012 New Campus and Its Three Towers

Integrated information database of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) · Campus module 05

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# Why did HKU build the Centennial Campus in 2012?

The immediate driver was a fundamental transformation of Hong Kong's education system — the "334 Scheme" (三三四学制). The reform lengthened undergraduate degrees from three years to four and took full effect in 2012, meaning HKU had to simultaneously accommodate both the final cohort of three-year-degree students and the first intake of the new four-year degree, sharply inflating student numbers. According to the HKU Estates Office, planning for the Centennial Campus began in 2005, precisely to "cater for the larger student intake arising from the introduction of the 334 education reform"^※.

To size the expansion, HKU completed an internal study in 2004 that concluded roughly 100,000 square metres of additional space was needed^※ to support the University's ambition of becoming a world-class research institution. Finding a contiguous million-odd square feet of land in land-starved western Hong Kong Island was itself an engineering challenge — and the solution lay on the hillside west of the main campus.

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# Where did the land come from? Building a campus on a hillside reservoir site

The Centennial Campus occupies the site of fresh-water and salt-water service reservoirs operated by the Water Supplies Department since the 1920s, on the hill west of the main campus. Building there meant first relocating reservoirs that were still in service. The conventional approach — large-scale slope cutting and fill — would have felled a large number of trees abutting Lung Fu Shan Country Park^※ and generated vast quantities of construction waste.

Instead, HKU, the Water Supplies Department and the engineering consultants adopted a method unprecedented in Hong Kong: relocating the two salt-water service reservoirs into rock caverns carved inside Lung Fu Shan itself — each cavern roughly 50 metres long, 17.6 metres wide and 17 metres high, with a maximum storage capacity of 12,000 cubic metres each — with the works completed and commissioned in 2009^※. Once the surface reservoirs were emptied, the building land was released, while significantly reducing slope cutting, tree removal and construction noise and dust, and preserving three graded historic buildings on the site^※. This "water in the hill, campus on the ground" solution later earned recognition from the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers.

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# Who led the design of the Centennial Campus?

In 2006, HKU ran an "Ideas Competition" for the master plan of the main campus and the Centennial Campus, won by a consortium of Wong & Ouyang (Hong Kong) Ltd and the American firm Sasaki Associates^※. After the competition, Wong & Ouyang was formally appointed architect and lead consultant for the Centennial Campus, with Gammon Construction Ltd as the main contractor^※.

In its own master-plan documents, Wong & Ouyang summarises the core design values as: "a learning place of diverse campus communities, where environmental quality is promoted, being a campus where historic buildings and landscapes are rediscovered and conserved, where space is used efficiently, where effective linkages are made with the MTR and other means of public transport, cost-effectiveness, and a sense of place unique to the University"^※. This design philosophy fuses principles of "learning community", "environmental and heritage responsibility", "one campus" and "open and transparent planning process" — in some ways answering a long-standing worry from the University's piecemeal, "decentralised" growth: how to keep expanding without Old and New campuses fragmenting apart. Wong & Ouyang later described the Centennial Campus as "rejuvenating the whole campus, fostering a sustainable learning environment, and laying the foundation for future redevelopment of the main campus". Awards it has received include an Honourable Certificate in the New Building category at the 2014 Quality Building Award, and a Merit Award in the Research and Planning category at the 2008 Green Building Award^※.

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# What are the three academic towers of the Centennial Campus?

At the core of the Centennial Campus stand three academic teaching towers, each independently named after its donor, belonging respectively to the Faculties of Arts, Law and Social Sciences.

# Run Run Shaw Tower — Faculty of Arts

The 11-storey Run Run Shaw Tower was funded by the Shaw Foundation of Sir Run Run Shaw and opened in 2012^※. Before the building was completed, the Faculty of Arts' teaching, research and administrative units were scattered across various buildings in the main campus; the new tower gathers its departments, research centres and affiliated units under one roof, forming a unified academic hub for the Faculty. The ground floor houses the Concourse Gallery, which regularly exhibits art and photography by alumni, students and staff, merging academic space with cultural display. Adjacent to the tower is Run Run Shaw Heritage House^※ — originally senior staff quarters for the Elliot Pumping Station (built 1923–1924), a graded historic building that today hosts Hong Kong University Press and the Faculty of Humanities' research-institute community.

# Cheng Yu Tung Tower — Faculty of Law

Cheng Yu Tung Tower was dedicated on 8 November 2012, the Law Faculty's first standalone building since its founding in 1969^※. The Faculty had operated from Caine Road for 43 years; only with the move into the new tower did it gain dedicated, integrated academic space. The building is named after its donor: Dr Cheng Yu Tung and his family, through the Chow Tai Fook Charity Foundation, gave HK$400 million to HKU in 2008^※, one of the largest private donations the University had received up to that point. The tower houses a Mooting Chamber, Advocacy Laboratories, a postgraduate study centre, a clinical legal education centre and student-society rooms. Former Chief Justice Professor Andrew Li Kwok-nang gave the address at the dedication ceremony^※, remarking: 「法治的持续活力有赖每个人的警觉……律师由法学院造就」 ("The continued vitality of the rule of law depends on the vigilance of everyone … lawyers are made by the law faculty"), capturing the tower's institutional significance for legal education.

# Jockey Club Tower — Faculty of Social Sciences

The Jockey Club Tower has a floor area of over 17,500 square metres and was built with a HK$323 million donation from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, opening in 2012 as the unified home of the Faculty of Social Sciences' departments^※. Inside is the Cartographica Laboratory and Library, which holds a collection of some 61,480 map items focused on Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, plus more than 15,800 aerial photographs^※ — one of the few professional map archives in Hong Kong. The building also houses ExCEL3 (Excellence in Capacity-building on Entrepreneurship and Leadership for the Third-sector), an interdisciplinary platform. According to the Faculty of Social Sciences, ExCEL3 aims to strengthen capacity building for local non-governmental organisations and empower civil society, while building capacity for civil-society research and teaching within the University^※ — fostering entrepreneurship and innovation in the third sector (non-profit organisations) through training, sharing and research, and building a platform connecting philanthropists, foundations and institutional investors with NGOs and academia; the programme operates three "Institutes" covering executive, service and community functions. Under ExCEL3's impetus, HKU also launched the territory's first Master of Social Sciences in Nonprofit Management, on which students may also earn a Master of Public Administration from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. The Chinese calligraphy of the building's name was inscribed by the renowned sinologist Professor Jao Tsung-i^※.

The library's collection, in fact, predates the Jockey Club Tower itself by decades. According to the HKU Geography Department, its more than 1,500 geography theses and postgraduate papers date back to 1968^※, while the aerial-photograph archive covers most of Hong Kong, spanning 1924 to 1996^※; staff have also catalogued around 4,000 British Admiralty charts. The department records that systematic accumulation of the collection began in 1977, when Professor C.J. Grant, then Head of Department, led the team in building over a long effort what "became one of the best equipped map libraries in the region"^※. The Geography department itself was formally established in 1931; when teaching resumed after the Second World War in 1946, the department set about replacing equipment and collections dispersed during the war^※. In other words, the map archive that literally "moved into" the Centennial Campus with the Jockey Club Tower carries over half a century of accumulated history from within the Faculty of Social Sciences — it simply had to wait until 2012, when it moved with the Faculty, to receive such a dedicated and consolidated home.

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# What role do the Lee Shau Kee Lecture Centre and the Grand Hall play?

Beyond the three academic towers, the Centennial Campus includes a dedicated lecture and cultural hub — the Lee Shau Kee Lecture Centre^※, named for Dr Lee Shau Kee, who in 2007 donated HK$500 million to support campus development and scholarships^※.

At the centre of the Lecture Centre is the Grand Hall, seating over 1,000^※, together with 26 lecture theatres and classrooms and a black-box theatre. The Grand Hall sits on the site of a former Water Supplies Department underground service reservoir and is built on a "box-in-box" structure; HKU has described its acoustic isolation as possibly making it "one of the quietest venues in Hong Kong", able to support symphony concerts, international academic conferences and film premieres. Its dedication ceremony was held on 6 January 2013^※, with an inaugural concert performed that evening by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. It has since become the regular venue for HKU's matriculation and graduation ceremonies.

The acoustics were designed jointly by Shen Milsom & Wilke and Jaffe Holden, with an electronically steerable sound system that automatically adjusts coverage and distribution to match the event mode^※, and compatibility with wide-screen surround-sound film projection. According to the same source, the Lecture Centre overall covers about 84,000 square metres (roughly 900,000 square feet) of floor space across about 85 teaching spaces^※, including the Lecture Centre and related teaching facilities, with some classrooms offering breakout discussion spaces and distributed video systems to support hybrid teaching modes.

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# How does University Street link the old and new campuses?

The connection between the Centennial Campus and the main campus is carried by a companion project, University Street. University Street is a double-height, covered pedestrian-only thoroughfare running east–west to link the existing buildings of the main campus with the new Centennial Campus^※, outfitted throughout with courtyards, rest pavilions, charging points and Wi-Fi. It also provides direct at-grade access from Pokfulam Road to the MTR and other public transport^※. University Street was completed in September 2013 at a cost of HK$220 million, with Wong & Ouyang again as lead consultant and construction carried out in three phases^※.

Its completion made the two campuses physically contiguous — staff and students no longer had to leave campus and cross public roads to move between them. In Wong & Ouyang's project description, University Street integrates a variety of spatial forms — gardens, courtyards, rest pavilions and passageways, furnished with seats, tables, power outlets and wireless connectivity^※, making it both a place for public interaction and academic activity and a space for quiet personal retreat. In December 2014, the Centennial Campus gained a further boost with the opening of HKU Station on the MTR, strengthening the new campus's public-transport links with the city.

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# What does the Centennial Campus's green-building certification signify?

The Centennial Campus is HKU's flagship green-building project. In January 2013, it was awarded LEED 2009 Platinum certification, making the University the first higher-education institution in Hong Kong to attain the rating and only the second organisation in the city overall^※. At the same time it also received BEAM Platinum certification under Hong Kong's own building environmental assessment method^※ — the first building project, and campus, in Hong Kong to achieve double-Platinum status under both LEED and BEAM.

Certification covers six areas: sustainable site development, water efficiency, energy performance, material selection, indoor environmental quality and innovative design. Specific sustainable design measures include:

• Renewable energy: rooftop solar panels and wind turbines for power generation, plus regenerative lift systems^※.
• Water management: low-flow water fittings and water-efficient irrigation; grey-water and rainwater recycling; and recovery of condensate from air-conditioning systems^※.
• Building systems: the Grand Hall uses a displacement air-conditioning system; buildings feature chilled-water storage tanks with variable-speed chillers^※.
• Building orientation: strategically oriented layouts to maximise natural daylight and natural ventilation^※; green roofs, sky gardens and courtyards mitigate the urban heat-island effect.
• Underground infrastructure: underground reservoirs and cavern water-storage systems place major infrastructure below ground, preserving the natural landscape at the surface^※.
• Interactive monitoring: according to the HKU Estates Office, the campus features interactive display screens showing real-time energy, water, waste and recycling data^※.

In addition, the campus is built into the hillside with "a backdrop of green leafy slopes", blending the buildings with the natural environment of Lung Fu Shan and avoiding the ecological damage that large-scale cutting of steep slopes would have caused.

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# How did the Centennial Campus reshape HKU's spatial landscape?

The Centennial Campus's most profound effect lies not in any single building but in how it changed the overall make-up of HKU as a "hillside city-campus".

Before the Centennial Campus existed, the teaching and administrative units of the Faculties of Arts, Law and Social Sciences were scattered piecemeal across buildings in the main campus — the three faculties' academic ecosystems long cramped by tight space. The Centennial Campus gave each faculty its own standalone building and, with it, a new disciplinary spatial identity: Arts received the Run Run Shaw Tower; Law, after 43 years of renting accommodation on Caine Road^※, finally took possession of its first dedicated tower; and Social Sciences consolidated its previously dispersed departments within the Jockey Club Tower.

The new campus added approximately 35% more space to the University overall^※, directly resolving the space pressure of having two cohorts of undergraduates studying concurrently under the 334 Scheme (accommodating roughly 3,000 additional students in 2012), and also freeing up room for functional reorganisation in parts of the main campus.

The HKU Estates Office has described the campus as "rejuvenating the whole campus and fostering a sustainable learning environment" — the new campus was not merely an extension but the starting point for the next round of redevelopment of the main campus. In a high-density urban environment, using cavern engineering to free surface land for buildings, meeting decarbonisation pressure through double-Platinum green-building standards, and bridging the pedestrian gap between two campuses with a covered University Street together form the complete narrative of HKU's westward expansion. For the campus's specific location within the University's wider geography, see campus-geography.md; for the broader context of its green-building profile and hillside redevelopment history, see architecture-and-sustainability.md; for a full directory of the three towers and other named HKU buildings, see building-directory.md.

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# "Centennial Campus" and "Centennial College" are not the same thing

One easy source of confusion: HKU also operates a self-financing, full-time, four-year degree institution called Centennial College, a subsidiary of HKU SPACE, established by the University in 2011 and admitting its first students in 2012^※, located near Wah Fu Estate in Pokfulam. It shares a similar name and founding dates (both around 2011–2012) with the physical campus described in this article, the Centennial Campus to the west of the main campus — but their natures are completely different: the former is an independently run, self-financing affiliated college, while the latter is the physical expansion of HKU's own teaching buildings. The two Chinese and English names are occasionally conflated in common usage; this database follows official sources in listing them separately and does not treat them as equivalent.

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# Uncertain / to be verified

• Floor areas of the three academic towers individually: HKU Giving pages disclose only the Jockey Club Tower's area (over 17,500 sq m); the precise floor areas of Run Run Shaw Tower and Cheng Yu Tung Tower are not fully disclosed on HKU's public pages — this article does not speculate on unverified figures.
• Total donation amount for Run Run Shaw Tower: The HKU Giving page confirms it was funded by the Shaw Foundation but does not list a specific amount — this article states only what is publicly documented.
• Total cost of the cavern reservoir works: public sources describe the nature and scale of the works but do not disclose the cost.

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