Student Residential Hall System and the Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village

The City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) Comprehensive Information Database · 05 Campus Module

A single residential block, assembled from just over 1,300 prefabricated modules, yet holding more than 2,000 beds — that was the answer CityUHK delivered in 2024 at Whitehead, Ma On Shan. A special note: CityUHK does not have a collegiate system (no college/residential college system). Unlike the nine colleges of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, or the Oxford and Cambridge residential college model, CityUHK’s ‘College’ refers to an academic college (such as the College of Business or College of Engineering), which has nothing to do with student accommodation. Student housing at CityUHK operates as a hall-based system managed centrally by the Student Residence Office, with each ‘hall’ as the unit — not as an autonomous residential college. This article examines that hall system in detail, with a particular focus on the Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village at Whitehead, Ma On Shan, which opened in 2024. In-depth coverage of hall life and culture (resident associations, traditions, orientation) can be found in the separate article ‘Residence and Hall Culture’.

Editorial note: All factual statements are sourced from the references at the end of the article. Hall place numbers and listings are subject to annual adjustment; this article is based on currently published records. Named donors (in the 00–12 neutral factual section) are recorded as documented. This repository has not been able to verify the complete official English and Chinese names of every hall individually; some are designated by code (Hall N) and marked ‘to be confirmed’.

# 1. CityUHK Has No Collegiate System: Halls Are Not Colleges

Let’s first clear up a common misunderstanding. CityUHK has multiple ‘College(s)’ and ‘School(s)’, but they are academic structures (units that organise departments, programmes, and research) and are completely unrelated to student accommodation. CityUHK does not have a collegiate system of the CUHK type — there is no such thing as ‘upon admission you are assigned to a college, which you belong to for life, and the college runs its own general education / halls / college anniversary’.

Student accommodation at CityUHK follows a model closer to the Anglo-American ‘hall’: students apply for and are allocated to a specific hall, which is managed centrally by the Student Residence Office (SRO). Each hall has a Residence Master and a hall residents’ association, but does not undertake academic or general education functions. Therefore, any reference to ‘colleges’ or ‘residential colleges’ in the context of CityUHK should be understood as not applicable; the present repository has also explicitly stated in the relevant module (10 Colleges/Schools) that CityUHK has no collegiate system.

# 2. Overview of the Hall System: Two Major Hall Clusters, Over Seventeen Halls

Student housing at CityUHK is distributed across two major hall clusters:

1. Kowloon Tong Cornwall Street Cluster: located near the main campus along Cornwall Street, this is the University’s older main cluster, originally designed by RMJM and P&T Group^※, containing multiple halls (Hall 1–11).
2. Ma On Shan Whitehead Residence Village: the Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village (Whitehead, Ma On Shan), which opened in 2024 and comprises several new halls (Hall 12–17), described in detail in section 3.

According to publicly available information, CityUHK’s student halls collectively can accommodate approximately 6,000 residents from around 70 countries/territories (based on university information cited in search results; exact hall place figures are subject to annual adjustment). Postgraduate students also have dedicated housing, partly in Jockey Club House within the Academic Exchange Building and elsewhere (per English Wikipedia and university sources).

# Some Main Cluster Halls (Cornwall Street, Halls 1–11)

Based on information from the Student Residence Office, the names of several halls in the Kowloon Tong main cluster are as follows (mostly named after donating organisations or benefactors):

Note: Chinese translations above are partly established renditions or free translations; exact official Chinese names are subject to validation by the University, and some are marked ‘TBC’. For the full Chinese and English names of halls in the main cluster, refer to the current page of the Student Residence Office. The naming of CityUHK’s halls likewise follows the convention of ‘inscribing the donor map’ (for the naming mechanism see 08-finances/benefactors-and-donors.md) — the names of Jockey Club, HSBC, Chan Sui Kau, Lee Shau Kee, Sir Gordon Wu and Lady Ivy Wu, etc., overlap substantially with the pedigree of donors for the main academic buildings and library.

# 3. Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village (Whitehead): In Detail

The most significant campus infrastructure project in recent years at CityUHK is the Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village located in Whitehead, Ma On Shan. It not only substantially increased the University’s hall capacity but also garnered coverage in international construction media as the ‘world’s largest modular student residence’.

# Location, Scale and Opening

• Location: Whitehead, Ma On Shan, located off the main campus and separate from the Kowloon Tong main campus; part of CityUHK’s ‘multi-node extension’ configuration (see the separate article ‘Campus Locations and Geographical Divisions’).
• Construction and opening: Construction began in 2022, and the village became operational in the third quarter of 2024^※; CityUHK held an opening and naming ceremony on 11 December 2024^※. Its opening coincided with the 30th anniversary of CityUHK’s university title.
• Capacity: provides over 2,000 bed spaces^※. According to construction trade press, the village comprises six blocks of 13 to 18 storeys with a total gross floor area of about 48,000 square metres^※; English Wikipedia records that it came into use in August 2024, consisting of six halls within three towers, accommodating around 2,200 CityUHK undergraduates and postgraduates (Halls 12–17)^※.

# Naming: Lee Shau Kee and Henderson Land’s Donation

The village is named after Dr Lee Shau Kee, founder of Henderson Land Group, in recognition of his generous donation^※. Dr Lee made a major donation in 2018 through the Lee Shau Kee Foundation to support CityUHK’s long-term development; his earlier generosity has already endowed two named chair professorships, one named professorship and numerous scholarships^※ (Note: Hall 6 on the main campus is also named ‘Lee Shau Kee Hall’, a different building from the Whitehead ‘Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village’, but both are named after Lee Shau Kee).

# ‘World’s Largest Modular Student Residence’: Construction Method

The most striking feature of the Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village is its industrialised modular construction:

• It adopted the Modular Integrated Construction (MiC) method, with the entire project using more than 1,300 modules^※; MiC was applied to student rooms, common areas, corridors, toilets and plant rooms^※.
• According to industry reports, the project is the ‘world’s largest modular student residence’ in terms of bed count^※; the modules were supplied by CIMC Modular Building Systems, and the main contractor was Gammon Construction^※, with completion roughly two years ahead of the original schedule^※.

This modular approach is not CityUHK’s first foray into hall construction — the earlier SH5 student residence already employed the same MiC method, cutting the construction period by about two years and reducing waste and materials (see the article ‘Architectural Styles, Green Campus and Net-Zero Carbon Infrastructure’). The Whitehead Residence Village can be seen as the scaled-up, culminating application of this approach across CityUHK’s hall building history.

# Sustainable and Smart Features

• 110 photovoltaic (solar) panels are installed on the rooftop of the residential towers for energy saving^※;
• A smart building management system provides real-time maintenance data and explores smart living technologies^※;
• According to construction trade media, the modular method also achieved approximately 75% reduction in construction noise and about 68% reduction in construction waste, along with the use of low-carbon concrete and grid electricity instead of diesel generators^※.

Supplementary editorial note: Regarding bed spaces and tower counts, the University’s press release records ‘over 2,000 bed spaces’; English Wikipedia records ‘around 2,200, 6 halls / 3 towers’; construction trade reports record ‘6 blocks of 13–18 storeys, approx. 48,000 m²’. The three sources are broadly consistent (over 2,000), though details differ slightly. This repository records them side by side, with the University’s figure taking precedence.

# 4. Hall Life and Management (Overview)

Student halls are centrally coordinated by the Student Residence Office (SRO); each hall has a Residence Master and a residents’ association responsible for hall activities, discipline and community building. Because CityUHK has no collegiate system, halls play the role of a ‘living community’ rather than an ‘academic community’ — they serve as an important vehicle for students’ extracurricular social, cultural and sports activities, but are not involved in academic or general education matters. Although the two hall clusters are some distance apart by car (Kowloon Tong main campus and Whitehead, Ma On Shan), they are uniformly managed under the same SRO regulations, and the organisational structures of Residence Masters and residents’ associations are kept consistent in both locations, so that both new and old hall communities operate under ‘the same set of rules’. For specific hall application procedures, fees, traditions and activities, see the article ‘Hall Life and Culture’ and the Student Residence Office’s web page.

# 5. Missing and TBC List

• Complete official names of the main cluster halls (Hall 1–11): This repository has only listed the main halls based on the University’s webpage; some (e.g. Hall 10, Hall 11) and exact official Chinese names are marked ‘TBC’, subject to the current Student Residence Office page.
• Precise total bed capacity: The figure of ‘around 6,000 residents’ (main cluster + Whitehead) is subject to annual adjustment; for the Whitehead village it is ‘over 2,000 (approx. 2,200)’.
• Exact names and distribution of postgraduate halls: Some are located in Jockey Club House and elsewhere; the full list is TBC.

# 6. Summary

CityUHK’s student accommodation is a system that is ‘non-collegiate, hall-based, centrally managed by the SRO’, spread across two major clusters — the Cornwall Street main cluster in Kowloon Tong and the Whitehead cluster in Ma On Shan — accommodating around 6,000 residents altogether. Its most important leap forward in recent years is the Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village at Whitehead, which opened in 2024 and is named after Lee Shau Kee, founder of Henderson Land — over 2,000 bed spaces, more than 1,300 MiC modules, the ‘world’s largest modular student residence’, 110 photovoltaic panels and smart management. This has not only greatly eased the housing shortage on this urban campus but has also elevated CityUHK’s ‘modular + sustainable’ construction ethos to an internationally visible benchmark. It must be emphasised again: CityUHK’s ‘halls’ are always living communities, not colleges — CityUHK has no collegiate system.