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Site and Buildings
1.
A University Committee of 1939 recommended the removal of the University to a site outside the very crowded municipal limits of Hong Kong, The present site of remarkable natural beauty, on a hill sloping sharply to the harbour had become for Hong Kong what the College gardens are for Cambridge and Oxford, but it was never planned as a whole and hence it has been used very uneconomically. A con- sideration that weighed when the transfer of the University was recommended was that the University was impeding the natural growth of the city of Victoria. A Committee in 1940 reconsidered the whole matter with great care and produced plans and drawings to show that properly used the site would easily accommodate a University twice as large as Hong Kong University then was. Provision to meet municipal claims was made by a proposal to surrender part of the site for town extension and for road construction: compensation was to be found by extensions on to unoccupied Government land north and west of the University. It showed that by levelling and filling, the existing inadequate land for games could be very greatly incroasud, The Committee favours the acceptance or the proposals of this Committee of 1940,
2.
A new science building was completed about three months before the Japanese invasion, It accommodated existing classes in Chemistry, Physics, Botany and Zoology, but the plan was drawn up in the hope that the whole building might be adopted to accommodate the Chemistry Depart- ment alone. For a University such is a now projected this block should be assigned to the Chemistry Departint, and additional accommodation should be provided of no less space for Physics, Before the war this would have cost about £25,000 to £30,000, Accommodation for Botany, Zoology, Geology and Geography would also be necessary at a cost some- what less, perhaps £15,000, since accommodation for research work in Marine Zoology is already provided in the plans of the new Fisheries Research Institute. UNESCO inventories for the re-equipment of Laboratories in devastatud areas, which have been of great value to us show that the cost of now sexipment for science and medicine and engineering wil
3.
£70,000,
No reliable estimate of the cost of the repairs of the buildings of the Faculties of Arts and Science is possible. Information about the cost of building in Post-war Hong Kong is not yet to be had, All building materials vroup. wicks and cement will have to be imported ind the demand is very great, A sum of £15,000 for immediately necessary repair of those buildings lous not seem too high. The buildings of the Medical Faculty had, before the war, ceased to be adequate and they have been so sited against the nillsidethat extensions are impossible, The minimum repairs to Medical buildings may cost £8,000.
A sum
4. Housing of students and staff had ceased to be adequate. of £1000 might easily be required to repair the damage to hostels. and koer
To house the additional staff and students of the projectoä University would cost probably another £60,000. A small sum of perhaps £3.000 would suffice for the repair of the general and Chinese Libraries, The Hall of the University was very badly damaged At some future date it may be possible to persuade a local benefactor to build a Hall which may not be an affront to the bluntest aesthetic sense,
5.
The suns stated below for repairs are hardly more than guesses based on the cost of typhoon-Auage repairs before the war. expenditure will be necessary to carry on higher education in the Colony, however it may be a ZOÜ,
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