University of Chicago’s Hong Kong Education Center Underway

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, a nonprofit located in Hong Kong that supports charitable and community projects, issued a $30 million grant to support the construction of the University of Chicago’s new education, research and collaboration hub in Hong Kong. The center will expand the university’s work in China and Asia, complementing its other current centers in Beijing and Delhi, India.

The new center will be named the Francis and Rose Yuen Center, after University Trustee Francis Tin Fan Yuen and wife Rose Wai Man Lee Yuen, who also gave financial support to help with construction. It will house a variety of programs for the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, providing space and support for study-abroad programs available within the college as well as create academic exchanges with other regional partner institutions, according to the school’s website. For instance, it will offer the Booth Executive MBA Program Asia in addition to other programs that emphasize social innovation and entrepreneurship.

The construction project comes after the university already launched a center in an interim facility in Hong Kong last year. The center gives the university community and colleagues a broad base for collaboration and to create new social impact opportunities in Hong Kong. For instance, Booth’s Social Enterprise Initiative will operate the Hong Kong Jockey Club Programme on Social Innovation, supported by the trust.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Bing Thom Architects designed the Yuen Center, which began construction in late June. The facility is designed to be built into Mound Davis, suspended above what was once the historic Jubilee Battery site in the late 1930s and later a British Army Royal Engineers’ quarters. The design incorporates some of the site’s key historic buildings as part of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Heritage Preservation Project. The Yuen Center is currently scheduled to open in 2018.