Kunshan, Jiangsu, China
Duke Kunshan University (DKU) opened its new student housing in 2023 and is using one of their undergraduate residence halls for the first time for the 2025-26 academic year. DKU built eight undergraduate residence halls and one graduate residence hall to accommodate students on campus. They used six of the eight undergraduate residence halls when they first opened in 2023 and used seven of the halls in the 2024-25 academic year. This year, due to growing enrollment, they are using all eight undergraduate residence halls for the first time. Their incoming undergraduate class (Class of 2029) is the largest in the university’s history and includes students from 36 countries.
Each undergraduate residence hall houses around 250 students, offering single and double room options. Nearly all double rooms are assigned to only two students, which is less than the traditional number (4–8 students) at Chinese universities. Residents in doubles have shared bathrooms on their floor. There is a mix of floor types in each residence hall: all male, all female, and coed. At the elevator landing on each floor are seating areas, bulletin boards, and a large lounge that hangs over the main entrance and looks out over a courtyard. There are also small study rooms on each floor. On the first floor of each residence hall are the residence life coordinator’s office, a help desk, digital signage for campus information and activities, a kitchen, laundry room, classroom, and a large lounge that has been nicknamed “the living room.”
The eight residence halls for undergraduate students are paired up, connected by four courtyards. The halls also include four living-learning communities that focus on the arts, wellness, global citizenship, and leadership, each one with a faculty-in-residence and a learning community assistant.
Charlie Clausen, assistant dean of student life, is excited about the programming in the undergraduate halls. “Programmatic plans include creating a residential college feel that draws students back to the same courtyard year after year until they graduate. A key driver of this is the monthly friendly competition series ‘Hall-lympics,’ in which courtyards compete against each other in a variety of fun events that have included cooking, decorating, trivia, and physical feats.”
All first-year students are housed on the second floor of each residence hall, along with students participating in the living-learning communities. The rest of the student residential community (sophomores, juniors and seniors) live on the upper levels. Having all undergraduates living together in each hall is Clausen’s favorite part of the new on-campus student housing because of the community it allows them to build. “My favorite parts of opening these halls are that they allow all undergraduate students to live on campus in buildings initially designed, rather than retrofitted, as residence halls for the first time in our university’s history. Also, they allow us to mix and mingle first-year and upper-division undergraduate students in a way we’d not been able to do before these halls opened, which opens up an exciting door of more opportunities for cross-class standing student interaction and mentorship.”
The graduate student residence hall houses 100 students in apartments with space for four people in each apartment. Each one has private bedrooms, a shared bathroom, a kitchenette, and a living room. The first floor in this hall has a security help desk, digital signage, a large lounge, and a laundry room.
The architecture of all the residence halls incorporates design elements from the residential homes in Kunshan, Jiangsu, China, and design elements from their founding institutions, Wuhan University in China and Duke University in North Carolina. They also achieved LEED O+M Gold certification this year, making DKU the first and only Chinese university to achieve such a certification.
— Camille Perlman
Spotlight is your chance to show off recent construction or renovation projects. Member institutions and architects are encouraged to share details about hall features, related programs, and how they connect to the overall housing mission as well as photographs of the completed building. Share your success stories.