If you’re going to have a purpose-built campus for studies in Architecture, interior and product design; digital media; fashion and image design; and communication design, it had better be a visually arresting work of innovative design itself, bold in concept and execution. The Hong Kong Design Institute Campus, completed in 2010, comprises an aerial “city” housing library, offices and various other spaces, topped by an accessible, landscaped roof. This “city”, apparently floating seven storeys up, is covered in screen-printed white glass and forms a 100m x 100m giant loop surrounding, and supported by, four towers, each dedicated to one of the four departments, each simultaneously imposing but somehow more of the air than the earth. This innovative effect, created by Coldefy & Associés Architectes Urbanistes, of France, is made possible by the towers’ vertical steel trellis “diagrid” structure, which encloses another remarkable feature of a building requiring a double-take: a 60m escalator, Hong Kong’s longest such single walkway. Concrete, steel, glass and over 4000 students: all floating in space.