Shantou University Staff Dormitory

Shantou, China

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Shantou University Staff Dormitory

Shantou, China

Firm

RCPA+ PW Hsiao Architects & Associates

Type

Residential › Multi Unit Housing

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2025

SIZE

100,000 sqft - 300,000 sqft

BUDGET

Undisclosed

The Shantou University Staff Dormitory is faculty housing funded in full by the Li Ka Shing Foundation, commissioned to help the university attract and retain high-caliber faculty.

The site sits at the northwest edge of the Riyuekeng Reservoir on Shantou University's Sangpu Mountain campus: a narrow parcel between shoreline and wooded hillside, with meaningful grade change along its length. 304 units include studios to four-bedroom family homes, on a site that demanded density while preserving sightline to water and hill.

The main design concept, HOME away from HOME, reorganizes the home around one goal: getting faculty who'd otherwise never cross paths on a large campus to actually meet. Functions that normally sit inside each unit - living room, laundry, dining - are pulled out and rebuilt as shared space: an open kitchen and dining hall, a lounge, a laundry cafe. Private units, freed of that square footage, grow larger and stay cleaner. The same logic shapes the unit plan itself: each residence is standardized into four block sizes - S, M, L, XL - that stack across the floor plate like building blocks, matching a faculty population whose household size shifts constantly.

The two 22-story towers pivot in a shallow V, following the reservoir shoreline and hillside contours - the site's grade change resolved as plan geometry. Where the towers meet the water, a grand stair absorbs the vertical drop, doubles as an amphitheater, and frames the sightline out to the reservoir, staging the walk from campus to home as a small ceremony.

The balcony grid wrapping both towers reads as pattern from a distance; up close, it's infrastructure for daily life - laundry, bicycles, plants, outdoor work. The facade also performs: perforated steel panels and stainless railings provide sun protection, encourage natural ventilation, and pre-condition air to assist cooling.

At ground level, the podium breaks into distinct nodes rather than one lobby - kitchen and dining, lounge and juice bar, and, given equal weight, a laundry cafe: the concept made literal, a chore turned social occation.