Location and Campus Layout — The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

The Clear Water Bay campus of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is the youngest and most systematically planned of Hong Kong's three research universities. Built into a hillside facing the sea, it sits at Tai Po Tsai on the northern end of the Clear Water Bay Peninsula in the Sai Kung District. Before it became a campus, this land had been earmarked for a planned British military installation, "Kohima Camp" — a project shelved by the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. A university built for the future thus came to occupy ground that history had, in effect, vacated. This article sets out the campus's geographical coordinates, land area, terraced layout and construction timeline, along with the little-known story of how the site was chosen.

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# 1. Location

# Administrative division and precise coordinates

HKUST is located at Tai Po Tsai, Clear Water Bay, Sai Kung District, in the New Territories; its postal address is 1 University Road, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon^※. Administratively it falls within Sai Kung District, though "Clear Water Bay" is the customary geographical marker. Its precise coordinates are approximately 22°20′17″N, 114°15′47″E.

The campus stands at the northern tip of the Clear Water Bay Peninsula, overlooking Port Shelter (Sai Kung Hoi)^※. Port Shelter is a natural bay in Hong Kong's north-eastern waters, enclosed on three sides by Sai Kung country parks; its water quality is comparatively good and it sees little industrial pollution, making it one of the more biodiverse inner bays of Hong Kong's eastern waters. The Tai Po Tsai site itself is rugged terrain at an average elevation of about 85 metres^※, part of the relatively undeveloped hillside belt on the northern side of the peninsula — precisely the kind of ground that drew the British military to it in the 1980s as a location for a new barracks (see "Prehistory of the site" below): secluded enough for security, yet close to the coast for deployment.

# Distance from the urban area

According to study-abroad materials from the University of Calgary^※ and UCEAP documentation^※, the campus is roughly 30–45 minutes' drive from the Kowloon urban area. By car via Clear Water Bay Road the journey takes about 45 minutes; by public transport via Choi Hung station, roughly 30–40 minutes. Set in a quiet hillside location with no direct MTR link (the nearest stations, Hang Hau and Po Lam, require a further bus or minibus ride), the campus's relative remoteness is a significant reason many students choose to live in residence.

It is also worth noting that the Clear Water Bay Peninsula is home to TVB City, the headquarters of Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB). After the barracks plan was abandoned and the university built, the Tai Po Tsai area gradually developed into a community centred on HKUST and TVB City, attracting people working in film and television to buy homes nearby^※. The northern stretch of the peninsula thus presents an unusual pairing of "university plus media industry" — a human and geographical character quite distinct from the beach-resort atmosphere of Clear Water Bay proper at the peninsula's southern end.

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# 2. Land area

The HKUST campus covers roughly 60 hectares (about 150 acres)^※, making it on the medium-to-large side among Hong Kong university campuses. Because of the terrain, however, the buildable area is not the same as the total site: much of the land is sloping greenery and woodland. According to figures compiled by Professor Anthony Walker, a scholar of construction engineering^※, the completed academic building alone exceeds 170,000 square metres of floor area, supported by more than 2,000 student bed spaces, nearly 350 staff quarters and over 5 kilometres of internal roads — which means a considerable share of the 60 hectares was given over to dense buildings and infrastructure rather than left as open ground. The Lee Shau Kee Campus^※, built from 2010 on land south of Hang Hau MTR station, added roughly 10 hectares as a southern extension of the main campus and officially opened in 2013; from 2025, four planned new teaching buildings are set to add about 2.1 hectares more (see "Later expansion" below).

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# 3. Campus planning and overall layout of buildings

# Master-planning background

When HKUST was first established, the Hong Kong government selected a master planner for the campus through an architectural design competition. The joint team of Simon Kwan & Associates and the British firm Percy Thomas Partnership submitted the runner-up entry^※, yet was nonetheless appointed campus master planner in December 1987^※ — the winning scheme was set aside and the runner-up built, a detail the University seldom dwells on in its own telling. The planners' challenge: the site was a steep Clear Water Bay hillside with dramatic changes in elevation, and they had to preserve as much of the existing vegetation as possible while integrating extensive academic, residential and sports facilities.

As architectural commentary summarises, the terraced arrangement became a defining design principle that has been carried forward ever since^※: academic facilities occupy the highest platform, while undergraduate halls and sports facilities sit on the low-lying ground near the sea, with the levels connected by vehicular roads, footbridges known as "Bridge Links", and a network of lifts. This approach of "following the terrain, building on terraces" was later carried into the design of newer student residences such as the Jockey Club i-Village, which opened in 2026.

The design documents retained by Simon Kwan & Associates — sketches, drawings and master plans — are held by the M+ museum in Hong Kong and are regarded as a significant archive of Hong Kong's post-war architectural history^※.

# Terrain-driven terracing

According to Wikipedia's overview of the campus layout^※, the master plan's core strategy was to "follow the contour of the land and build on successive platforms":

• Top platform (upper hillside) — the main academic belt: the Academic Building, the library, the administration block and faculty research offices.
• Intermediate level — the Entrance Piazza, student services, canteens (LG1, LG7 and others) and student activity spaces.
• Lower level and waterfront (foot of the hill, near the sea) — undergraduate halls, sports grounds, the Water Sports Center and a seaside promenade, facing Port Shelter with open sea views.

The levels are linked by roads, pedestrian footbridges and several outdoor lifts (the Bridge Link system), forming a three-dimensional transport network. Because the elevation differences are large and the connecting walkways intricate, "navigating by lift number" has become an everyday shorthand for giving directions among HKUST students and staff (see the related campus-culture discussion in Landmark buildings and public art^※ and the campus-legend chapters).

# Overview of major functional zones

The campus has two main entrances, the North Gate and South Gate, each with bus and minibus stops; they are the principal daily access points for students and staff. Because of the terrain, walking from one gate to the other takes considerable time, so shuttle buses run back and forth between the north and south ends (see Transport and campus facilities^※). This "two gates, linked through the middle by a vertical network of walkways" arrangement has remained the campus's spatial skeleton since the Simon Kwan / Percy Thomas scheme was implemented.

The Academic Building itself follows a clear internal logic: a long gallery called the Academic Concourse threads through most of the lecture theatres — LT-A to LT-E in sequence from the North Gate towards the South Gate, LT-F to LT-H along a parallel corridor, and LT-J and LT-K at the southern end^※. This habit of locating places by "letter code plus spatial sequence" mirrors the "lift-number" convention, and together they form a distinctive vocabulary for describing location on the HKUST campus.

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# 4. Prehistory of the site: a hillside that nearly became a barracks

Before it became a university campus, this stretch of hillside at Tai Po Tsai had a little-known history of military planning — a point this article flags as a case where earlier accounts could find no trace.

# Kohima Camp: a barracks reserved for the Gurkhas

According to the English Wikipedia entry on "Kohima Camp"^※, in 1980–81 the British authorities, reviewing their garrison requirements in Hong Kong, planned to build a new barracks at Tai Po Tsai to accommodate one additional infantry battalion. The planned camp was named Kohima Camp, after the Battle of Kohima of 1944, which turned back the Japanese offensive in the Second World War^※. The chosen site was the rugged hillside at the northern end of the Clear Water Bay Peninsula, averaging about 85 metres above sea level^※ — substantially the same ground the HKUST campus occupies today.

More specifically, the site was intended for the 2nd King Edward VII's Own Gurkha Rifles and the 7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles^※ — two elite infantry regiments of the British Army's Gurkha Brigade, composed of Nepalese soldiers, at the time an important part of Britain's defence establishment in Hong Kong.

# The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration: why the barracks plan was shelved

With the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, Hong Kong's future was settled and Britain began scaling back its garrison in the territory; the Kohima Camp project was consequently shelved^※. Had history run a slightly different course, the piazza where the Red Bird Sundial now stands might have been a barracks parade ground.

After the barracks plan was dropped, the land was not immediately put to another use; it sat vacant for a time. From 27 December 1986 to 1 January 1987, the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts held a "Diamond Scouting Jubilee Jamboree" there^※ — the last recorded public use of the hillside before it was converted into a university campus. Soon after, the land was handed to the university's preparatory committee and entered the campus-planning stage.

# Tai Po Tsai: a Hakka village that existed three centuries before the university

Tai Po Tsai, the site chosen for HKUST, was no nameless spot but one of the Clear Water Bay Peninsula's long-established Hakka settlements. According to local gazetteers, Tai Po Tsai village was founded in 1629, making it one of the oldest villages in the Sai Kung District^※. It belonged to a village alliance known as "Ho Chung Tung" (colloquially the "seven villages of Ho Chung"), centred on the village of Ho Chung — an alliance of seven neighbouring villages in north-eastern Sai Kung that historically shared temple worship, irrigation and local governance, a compact illustration of the twin "clan plus locality" structure of New Territories indigenous society. The 1911 census recorded 172 residents in the village (77 of them male)^※, a middling size for New Territories settlements of the time; the indigenous villagers were all surnamed Wan^※, a classic single-clan Hakka settlement.

From a three-hundred-year-old Hakka village, to a proposed British barracks, to a leading Asian research university — Tai Po Tsai has undergone three transformations of identity in under a century. As the barracks project and then the university took shape, the villagers gradually moved away; traces of the old settlement survive in parts on the hillside north of the campus, though systematic village history is fragmentary.

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# 5. Construction history

# Site selection and the decision (1986–1987)

The Hong Kong government announced in March 1986 its plan to establish a third university^※, and a preparatory committee was formed in September of that year. After evaluation, the hillside site at Tai Po Tsai, Clear Water Bay — the ground reserved for the abandoned Kohima Camp — was chosen. One reason was that the land had already been resumed by the government, simplifying land title; another was its proximity to the water and its distance from urban bustle, which suited the desired atmosphere of a research university.

June 1987: The Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club announced a donation of HK$1.5 billion (later raised to over HK$1.9 billion) towards the campus construction^※, one of the largest single private educational gifts in Hong Kong's history. The Club was also directly involved in managing the construction: half the members of the project committee were Jockey Club representatives. According to Professor Anthony Walker's analysis of the HKUST construction project^※, as early as May 1987 the Jockey Club's board had confirmed to the Hong Kong government's Chief Secretary that it was willing to fund and supervise the works^※ — in effect making the whole project a turnkey operation, with the funder deeply engaged in project management to ensure quality within an extremely compressed schedule.

Walker's figures give a sense of the scale: the academic building alone exceeds 170,000 square metres of floor area, alongside more than 2,000 student bed spaces, nearly 350 staff quarters, over 5 kilometres of internal roads, and main utility networks for gas, water, sewage and electricity^※. All of this was accomplished in under four years from a standing start to full operation — a pace of construction Walker describes as rare in Hong Kong's engineering history.

# Construction phases (1988–1993)

Construction proceeded in four stages — a preparatory phase, then Phases I, II and III:

The foundation ceremony came earlier than one might expect: on 8 November 1989, Charles, Prince of Wales (today King Charles III), visited the Tai Po Tsai site to unveil the foundation stone^※ — nearly two years before the University opened, with Phase I still under way. On 2 November 1991, HKUST held its inauguration, with 560 undergraduates and 140 postgraduate students entering the campus^※. The then Governor, Sir David Wilson, attended the opening ceremony and praised the library's bilingual Chinese–English online catalogue as world-leading^※.

# Later expansion (2010s to the present)

• 2010: Construction began on the Lee Shau Kee Campus, on the hilltop south of the main campus, covering about 10 hectares.
• 2013: The Lee Shau Kee Campus and the Lee Shau Kee Business Building (LSK) officially opened^※, joined at the same time by the Lo Ka Chung Building (home of the HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study).
• 2016: The Cheng Yu Tung Building (CYT) opened on 23 February^※, adding about 10,000 square metres of floor space, mainly for engineering and interdisciplinary research.
• 2021: The Shaw Auditorium opened on 17 November^※, giving the campus a dedicated venue for the performing arts.
• 2021–2026: The Jockey Club Global Graduate Tower (postgraduate hall, 2021), a new Student Centre (2023), the Jockey Club i-Village (2026) and the Martin Ka Shing Lee Innovation Building (expected completion 2025)^※ have been completed or are under construction in succession.
• Planned from 2025: According to press reports, HKUST plans to build four eight-storey teaching blocks on the south-western side of the Clear Water Bay campus, near the South Gate bus stop, on a total of about 2.1 hectares — 1.2 hectares of private land donated by the Shaw Foundation and 0.9 hectares of government land^※. The new buildings would mainly house laboratories, teaching facilities, offices, study and interaction spaces, and catering, to meet the needs of a growing student and staff population; construction could begin as early as 2027^※.

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# 6. Natural environment and landscape character

The scenic value of the Clear Water Bay campus is something students, staff and visitors often remark on. The campus's 150 acres are ringed on three sides by Hong Kong country-park green belts, with the fourth side facing Port Shelter^※; the panoramic sea-and-sky views are a defining feature that sets it apart from other Hong Kong university campuses. This pattern — green on three sides, sea on the fourth — echoes the logic behind the site's earlier life as a planned Kohima Camp: the same secluded terrain that appealed to the British military later served the University's ideal of scholarly pursuit "away from the madding crowd, facing the open sea".

The vertical drop from the Entrance Piazza to the waterfront promenade is on the order of several dozen metres, giving the campus a layered visual rhythm: the academic zone on the hilltop looks down over the halls by the bay. Large tracts of natural secondary woodland and hillside vegetation have been preserved, most notably Acacia confusa (Taiwan acacia); when it blooms in spring, the yellow blossom echoes the blue of the bay. Some of these acacia belts date back to the natural succession that followed the abandonment of the barracks plan and preceded the university's construction — among the few natural elements on campus that predate the University itself. (Acacia timber has in recent years also been recycled in the fit-out of the new Student Centre; see Green campus, ecology and expansion history^※.)

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# 7. Supplementary notes and items not verified

• Clear Water Bay Road: The main artery through the Clear Water Bay Peninsula and the route of buses 91 and 91M, linking the Kowloon urban area with the campus.
• Architectural style details (e.g., whether the design draws on a particular regionalist tradition): available public sources describe the architecture only in general terms as "modernist". The design thinking of Simon Kwan and Percy Thomas is documented mainly in the M+ archive, with no detailed public discussion; this item is noted as unverified.
• Whether Kohima Camp was ever actually built: all available sources record only that it was "planned" and "shelved following the Joint Declaration". No public record exists of any actual construction works (such as barrack foundations), suggesting the project was terminated late in the design stage; this item is noted as unverified.
• The specific timeline and resettlement arrangements for Tai Po Tsai villagers: the village's founding in 1629 and its 172 residents in 1911 are documented (see "Prehistory of the site"), but the specific years in which villagers moved away as a result of the barracks plan and the university's construction, and the resettlement arrangements, remain scattered across public records; this item is noted as lacking systematic documentation.

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