page_title: Ken Yeang
section_title: Work on Ecological Design
hierarchical_section_title: Ken Yeang / Biography / Work on Ecological Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Mesiniaga Tower viewed from the Subang–Kelana Jaya Link.
context_page_description: Ken Yeang is an architect, ecologist, planner and author from Malaysia, best known for his ecological architecture and ecomasterplans that have a distinctive green aesthetic. He pioneered an ecology-based architecture, working on the theory and practice of sustainable design. The Guardian newspaper named him "one of the 50 people who could save the planet". Yeang's headquarters is in Kuala Lumpur as Hamzah & Yeang, with offices in London as Llewelyn Davies Ken Yeang Ltd. and Beijing as North Hamzah Yeang Architectural and Engineering Company.
context_section_description: Yeang's research and technical work is in ecological architecture and masterplanning, establishing the formal basis for design, focussing on the biointegration of the human-made with nature, creating hybrid systems as ‘constructed ecosystems’. His work adopts bioclimatic design (climate-responsive passive low-energy) as a subset to ecological design, providing for him an underlying armature for ecological design. The approach also engenders critical regionalist features where climatic responses provide the links to its locality.
  A key project is Yeang’s own house, the 'Roof-Roof' House (1985) which is his early experimental bioclimatic built work. The dwelling has an identifiable curved louvred umbrella-like upper roof-structure that functions as a solar-filtering device and device that shades the building's lower roof terrace. Its side 'wind wing-walls' directs wind into the dining area. The swimming pool on the east functions as an evaporative-cooling device bring in the predominantly easterly breeze into the adjoining internal living spaces. The many features make the building an instructive reference prototype for his subsequent work on climate-responsive and ecological architecture. Influences can be further found in Yeang's later building and planning work. Yeang applied the bioclimatic passive-mode principles to the high-rise tower typology. Contending that the high-rise tower as an intensive built form will not go away overnight because of its existent economic basis arising from high urban land values and ability to accommodate rapid urban growth. He sought ecologically benign ways to make this built form green and humane to inhabit. Professor Udo Kulterman (Washington University) credits him as the inventor of the 'bioclimatic skyscraper',
  The Mesiniaga Tower (an IBM Franchise, 1992) brought together earlier experimental bioclimatic ideas in a single built form, such as the placement of the elevator core as a solar buffers to the tower's hot sides, placement of toilets and stairwells with natural ventilation opportunities, adopting various solar-path shaped sun-shades, use of an evaporative-cooling pool at the uppermost level, the overhead louvred canopy as a framework for future PV cells, and the vegetated and stepped façade and recessed sky-terraces as interstitial semi-enclosed spaces for building's users. This building as a prototype received several awards including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (1993), The Malaysian Institute of Architects Award, the Singapore Institute of Architects Award, The Royal Australian Institute of Architects Award and a citation from the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
  The Solaris building (Singapore, 2008) brought together his ideas on ecological architecture with a continuous landscaped ramp and other experimental devices. His ideas for an urban park-in-the-sky in the high-rise building type is manifested as a 'vertical linear park' in his Solaris Building (2011) at 1-North Singapore that is a benchmark building in his green agenda for designing buildings asbiointgratin with nature. The building has an ecologically-linked vegetated pedestrian walkway ramp that is 1.3 km in length as a 'vertical linear park', punctuated by sky garden terraces located at each of the building's corners, further linked to a mid-level and to the uppermost-level roof gardens.
  His work on biodiversity and systemic biointegrattion were implemented in the Suasana Putrajaya (Putrajaya, 2017) based on a 'biodiversity targets matrix' originally proposed for the GyeonGi Masterplan (Seoul, Korea).
  The Solaris' vertical linear park device led to his concept of the continuous 'green eco-infrastructure', a device that enables a vital ecological nexus between the built form and its surrounding landscape, bioregion and its hinterland, that became habitats and a crucial biodiversity and wildlife corridor in all his subsequent masterplanning and eco-city design work (e.g. the SOMA Masterplan in Bangalore, India) and in his architecture (e.g. the Spire Edge Tower, in Gurgaon, India, completion c. 2015
caption: The Mesiniaga Tower with its elevator core on the left side of the photograph
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