Campus Landmarks — Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre and Lau Ming Wai Academic Building

City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) integrated information database · 05 Campus module

One university, three buildings, each with a distinct personality: one wins on sheer size, so vast that colour-coding is needed to navigate it without getting lost; one wins on its spiky silhouette, a shard of crystal that starchitect Daniel Libeskind left in Hong Kong; and one wins on height, with an art gallery suspended on the 18th floor. These three buildings, wildly different in character, are what anchor CityU's Kowloon Tong campus on its "landmark map" — this article tours each of them in turn: the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building (formerly Academic 1), the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre and the Lau Ming Wai Academic Building (formerly Academic 3), setting out their scale, design, naming and place in the campus layout. The full building inventory is in ; the generational evolution of the buildings and the green-campus overview are covered in <Architectural Styles, Green Campus and Net-Zero Carbon Infrastructure>.

Note on conventions: factual claims carry endnote sources; building dates, floor areas and architects follow the current records of the University and authoritative entries, with discrepancies flagged where they arise (e.g. the floor area of the Creative Media Centre is recorded differently across sources; this archive lists the figures side by side without adjudicating).

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# 1. Yeung Kin Man Academic Building (Block P / Academic Building 1): CityU's core teaching building and library hub

In one sentence: the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building is the largest core teaching building on the CityU campus, completed in phases between 1989 and 1994, with a floor area of about 63,000 square metres^※, organised into five colour zones — purple, green, blue, yellow and red — and named in 2017 after Yeung Kin-man, founder of BIEL Crystal and a donor of more than HK$200 million to the University^※. The main University Library, the Run Run Shaw Library, sits inside it.

# How did this building come about? When was it built, and how big is it?

The Yeung Kin Man Academic Building began life as the first comprehensive teaching building on the CityU campus, originally called Academic Building 1 (Academic 1, or AC1). When the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong was founded in 1984, the institution built its permanent campus around Tat Chee Avenue in Kowloon Tong, and Academic 1 was the largest core building of that development. It was completed in phases between 1989 and 1994^※, in step with the Polytechnic's move into its present Kowloon Tong site, and stands as the landmark of the campus's "first generation" of main buildings.

In scale, the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building is the largest single building on the main campus. It has a floor area of about 63,000 square metres (about 680,000 square feet)^※ and houses 116 laboratories, 18 lecture theatres, classrooms and canteens^※. That sheer size means the building functions less as a single block and more as a city within a city — it accommodates the day-to-day teaching and research needs of most of the University's science and engineering departments, and hosts numerous administrative units and student-services offices.

# What does "Block P" mean? How does the five-colour zoning work?

Because of its vast footprint, the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building uses a five-colour zoning system for organisation and wayfinding. According to the University's official wayfinding system, the building is divided into five colour zones — purple, green, blue, yellow and red^※ — and room numbers in each zone begin with the first letter of the corresponding colour: "P" for purple, "G" for green, "B" for blue, "Y" for yellow and "R" for red.

"Block P" refers to the Purple Zone, one of the building's five zones. The name circulates widely in everyday life and online: students saying "I'm off to Block P" or "I'm in P6309" are simply referring to a specific room in the purple zone on a particular floor. The colour-zoning scheme not only solved the disorientation problem inside a 63,000-square-metre building; it has also become a distinctive piece of CityU campus culture — the first thing new students learn to decode is usually the "colour + number" room numbering system.

# Why is it named after Yeung Kin-man? What is BIEL Crystal?

The naming follows a substantial educational donation. Dr Yeung Kin-man, JP is the founder of Shenzhen-based BIEL Crystal, one of the world's leading manufacturers of glass covers for smart devices. On 28 April 2017 the University officially renamed Academic Building 1 the "Yeung Kin Man Academic Building"^※, in recognition of his "staunch support and generous donations given by Dr Yeung Kin-man, JP, for the University and students."

On the scale of the donation: in September 2015, Dr Yeung and his wife jointly donated HK$200 million to CityU^※ to support the establishment of the University's veterinary medicine school, student overseas-exchange programmes and endowed chair professorships. He later added a further donation of HK$18 million. Together the two gifts bring Dr Yeung's total giving to CityU alone to more than HK$218 million, putting him among the University's most significant donors. Beyond CityU, he has also donated to the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Wuhan University of Technology; his total educational philanthropy is reported to exceed HK$400 million.

At the time of the naming ceremony, Dr Yeung was an Honorary Doctor of CityU, Co-Chairman of the CityU Foundation, and Chairman of the Foundation's annual fund-raising dinner committee in 2016^※ — his ties to the University ran deep well before the naming. At the ceremony he remarked that CityU is a vibrant and distinguished university that deserves greater support from society.

# The Run Run Shaw Library: where does the University's knowledge hub sit?

The Run Run Shaw Library is CityU's only main library, and it occupies the 2nd floor (Red Zone) and the 3rd floor of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building. The two storeys provide around 2,700 seats^※, making the Library the University's core venue for revision, self-study and research. The Library has a storied history: the CityU Library (that of the former City Polytechnic) has existed since 1984^※, and moved with the institution to its present Kowloon Tong campus in 1989^※. In 1990, following a substantial donation to the City Polytechnic from Sir Run Run Shaw, the Library was officially named after him^※. For the Library's collections, special holdings and the exhibition programme of the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery, see (module 12, Miscellany).

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# 2. Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre: Libeskind's "crystal" landmark

On the edge of CityU's Kowloon Tong campus stands a building of sharp, facetted angles, seemingly bursting out of the ground like a crystal — the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre (RRS CMC). Designed by the international architect Daniel Libeskind, it is CityU's most recognisable architectural landmark and the permanent home of the School of Creative Media (SCM).

# Key facts

# Design: a crystal breaking through the ground

Libeskind is known for works including the Jewish Museum Berlin and the master plan for the World Trade Center site in New York; his signature language is sharp-edged, dynamically tilted geometric volumes. In Libeskind's own design statement, the Centre is "an elegant, low-tech design placed at the service of high-tech invention"^※. Its formal characteristics include:

• A facetted crystal form: a nine-storey crystalline structure that tapers upward and thrusts out sharp angles, its facade wrapped in shards of glass^※;
• A dramatic atrium stair: a central staircase spiralling upward with twists and turns, generating unexpected meeting spaces along the way^※;
• Asymmetric natural light: asymmetrically placed openings pierce the lecture theatres and laboratories, channelling daylight into the interior^※;
• Flowing collaborative spaces: interactive spaces arranged around recording studios, film sets and performance areas to encourage spontaneous collaboration.

The building is constructed in reinforced concrete and houses laboratories, a theatre and classrooms, with a roof garden; the corridors also carry the "SCMural" artwork by the artist Tjebbe van Tijen (per English Wikipedia). This facetted crystal stands in sharp contrast to the boxy academic blocks such as the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, marking CityU's shift from "functional container" to "architectural statement" (see <Architectural Styles, Green Campus and Net-Zero Carbon Infrastructure> for the broader generational story).

Comment: Libeskind's jagged geometry is unusual in a functional teaching building, which is precisely why the Centre has long been a favourite subject for architecture and design media, featured in international publications including Dezeen, Architizer and Tatler.

# Floor area: sources disagree

On the Centre's floor area, different sources give markedly different figures; this archive sets them side by side without adjudicating:

The two figures are wildly divergent — 265,000 square feet is roughly 24,600 square metres, nearly double the Wikipedia figure — probably owing to differences in the measurement basis ("construction area" vs "gross floor area" vs "usable area"). This archive does not adjudicate; both are listed as open questions.

# Function: a "full-stack" base for creative media

The building concentrates the professional facilities needed for creative-media teaching and production (Dezeen^※): sound stages, recording studios, screening rooms, exhibition and performance spaces and a multi-purpose theatre, along with interactive spaces designed for spontaneous exchange and collaboration. The academic units housed there include the School of Creative Media, the Centre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media, and parts of the computer science, media and communication, and English departments (Wikipedia overview^※). This blend of "art + computing + communication" is the spatial embodiment of CityU's interdisciplinary approach to creative media. The University said the Centre made CityU the first university in Asia to offer education and training of the highest standard in creative media^※.

# Honours and naming

According to public records, the building has received several design awards, including the 2013 Asia Pacific Property Awards "Best Public Service Architecture (Hong Kong)" (five-star)^※ and the 2011 Hong Kong Institute of Architects (HKIA) Annual Award — Merit^※; it has also been reported to have received BEAM Platinum certification in 2012. The Centre is named after Run Run Shaw, with funding from the HK$100 million donation of the Shaw Foundation^※. Run Run Shaw was a pioneering figure in Hong Kong film and television and a celebrated philanthropist, remembered across the campuses of universities in Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan through buildings and the Shaw Prize bearing his name. CityU's decision to name its creative media centre after him honours the donation and, fittingly, the building's film-and-media vocation.

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# 3. Lau Ming Wai Academic Building (AC3): CityU's vertical campus and cultural high ground

Unlike many universities with sprawling green campuses, CityU's main campus sits in the dense urban fabric of Kowloon Tong (the main campus covers about 15.6 hectares; see 00-overview/general-facts.md) and adjoins the Festival Walk shopping mall (see 15-campus-lore/festival-walk-symbiosis.md). Under such constraints, the University had no choice but to build upward — stacking teaching, research, exhibition and administrative functions into high-rise blocks to create a "vertical campus." The Lau Ming Wai Academic Building (formerly Academic 3 / AC3) is exactly the product of that logic.

Formerly known as Academic 3, it was designed by Ronald Lu & Partners and consists of a 20-storey tower plus a five-storey podium, with a total usable floor area of about 20,500 square metres (about 221,000 square feet), making it the tallest building on the CityU campus^※. It houses a 600-seat auditorium, IT laboratories, canteens and podium gardens on floors 6 to 8^※. The building integrates academic and cultural functions vertically, with exhibition space at the top and teaching and research below — a textbook solution for the high-density urban university, where classes, research and exhibitions all happen under one roof.

# The cultural high ground: the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery (18/F)

The most distinctive element of the Lau Ming Wai Academic Building is the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery on the 18th floor (gallery website^※). Placing a museum-grade art gallery on the top floor of an academic tower is a design with real thinking behind it: visitors must ascend to the upper reaches to view the exhibitions, so the physical "climb" echoes the cultural immersion of the experience; upper floors typically enjoy better light and views, which suits exhibition ambience; and putting a public-facing gallery at the top also makes it easier to separate public circulation from the teaching and research zones below. The gallery was named on 5 November 2019^※, mounts exhibitions spanning art, innovation, technology and interdisciplinary themes (from the Silk Road to Central African art), and marks its tenth anniversary in early 2026 — it makes the Lau Ming Wai Academic Building not merely a teaching block but CityU's cultural shop window to the public (for the full naming history and exhibition chronology, see ).

# Naming: Lau Ming-wai

The building is named after Lau Ming-wai, another instance of CityU's "naming-by-donation" tradition (for the naming mechanism, see 08-finances/benefactors-and-donors.md). Buildings named after donors are dotted across the campus — from the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre and Library, to the Lau Ming Wai Academic Building — together forming a "campus map written in the names of donors."

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# 4. Three buildings compared: three answers on massing, form and function

Three buildings, three personalities: the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building wins on mass — it is the "base plate" that keeps the campus running; the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre wins on form — an exuberant artistic landmark; the Lau Ming Wai Academic Building wins on vertical integration of functions plus a top-floor cultural space — the pragmatic vertical campus. All three carry the names of donors whose substantial support made them possible, and together they embody the CityU tradition of "writing the campus map in the names of donors" — reading the names on these three buildings is almost like reading a donor roll of honour for the University (see for an overview of the naming mechanism).

One curiosity worth noting: the CityU academic buildings' naming history — numbered first, named later (Academic 1 → Yeung Kin Man, Academic 2 → Li Dak Sum and Yip Yio Chin, Academic 3 → Lau Ming Wai) — means students and staff still routinely refer to them as "AC1/AC2/AC3" in speech, while official documents use the endowed names. This dual nomenclature is a distinctive feature of the CityU campus lexicon.

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# 5. Summary

CityU's campus "landmark map" can be summed up as "three plus one": three vast academic buildings numbered Academic and later named after donors (Yeung Kin Man, Li Dak Sum and Yip Yio Chin, Lau Ming Wai) carry the University's teaching and research; one Libeskind facetted crystal (the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre) carries the visual identity of CityU and, arguably, of Kowloon Tong. The Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, with its sheer size and five-colour zoning, carries daily teaching and research and houses the Run Run Shaw Library; the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre wins on form and serves as the University's architectural calling card; and the Lau Ming Wai Academic Building, as the tallest building on campus with a gallery on its top floor, demonstrates the vertical solution for a high-density urban university. Around this skeleton of "three plus one," the rest — the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery and the other named buildings — fills in the flesh of a vertical, dense metropolitan institution.

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