Ken Yeang
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Ken Yeang
Born 1948
Penang, Malaysia
Nationality Malaysian
Other names 杨经文/楊經文;
[pinyin]: Yáng Jīngwén
Occupation Architect, Writer
Known for sustainable design architecture

Dr. Ken Yeang ([Chinese]: 杨经文/楊經文; pinyin: Yáng Jīngwén; born 1948) is a prolific Malaysian architect and writer best known for advancing green design and planning, differentiated from other green architects by his comprehensive ecological approach.

Ken Yeang is an ecoarchitect and an early pioneer of ecological design and planning, carrying out design and research work in this field since 1971. He is widely regarded by his fellow ecodesign peers as a ‘guru’ of green design.

Yeang works between the UK architect and planning firm, Llewelyn Davies Yeang (as Design Director (2005) and Chairman, since 2010) and his Asia office, T. R. Hamzah and Yeang (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). Llewelyn Davies Weeks (rebranded as Llewelyn Davies Yeang) was founded in the mid-1960s by Lord Llewelyn Davies. T. R. Hamzah & Yeang was formed in 1975 with Tengku Datuk Robert Hamzah, his friend and contemporary at the AA School, and a Prince in the Malay Royal family.

Early education

Born in 1948 in Penang, Malaysia, Yeang attended Penang Free School and Cheltenham Boys College (a British 'public school' in Gloucestershire, UK), obtained his first qualifications in architecture from the Architectural Association School (London), and received a PhD in ecological design and planning from Cambridge University's Department of Architecture for his dissertation, "A Theoretical Framework for Incorporating Ecological Considerations in the Design and Planning of the Built Environment", published as Designing with Nature (McGraw-Hill, 1995) that became the springboard for his pioneering work in ecodesign, green architecture and ecocity masterplanning.

Architect offices, ecoarchitecture, ecomasterplanning, ecocities

Yeang is best known for his deep green ecoarchitecture, ecomasterplans and ecocity designs that go beyond conventional rating systems such as LEED, BREEAM, etc.

His architect and planning firm, T. R. Hamzah and Yeang (www.trhamzahyeang.com) has sister offices in the UK as Llewelyn Davies Yeang (www.ldavies.com) and in China as North Hamzah Yeang Architectural and Engineering Company (Beijing), a joint venture with Norinco (a Chinese Army's company) with branch offices in Shenzen, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing.

His innovative ecodesign work led his firm, T. R. Hamzah and Yeang to be cited in the US magazine, Fast Company (March 2011) as among the top 8 most innovative architect firms in the world. The UK Guardian newspaper (January 2008) lists Yeang as '..one of the 50 People who could save the Planet..’,

The relevance in Yeang's ecoarchitecture, differentiating his design work from other ecodesigners is an authentic ecology-based approach to architecture and masterplanning. Whereas others are based on rating systems (such as LEED, BREEAM, ‘Living Building Challenge’, etc.) or on ecoengineering (cleantech, carbon neutral, etc.), his is an ecology based and environmentally more inclusive approach, founded on the premise that ecodesign or ecological design should be derived from ecological principles being an obvious endeavor.

The uniqueness in Yeang's ecodesign work lie in its ecological authenticity. This combined with his innovative ideas-driven designs that are identifiable by an evidently 'green' eco-aesthetic and style that distinctively set his work apart from other sustainable design and ecocity work e.g. in the Solaris building [1-north, Singapore] that has a innovative 'Vertical Linear Park'; the SOMA Masterplan (Bangalore, India) which has a 'green ecoinfrastructure' extending across the masterplan, using ecobridges and ecoundecrofts to maintain continuous ecological nexus.

This empirical ecological approach enables him to advance green design at several dimensions concurrently - architecturally, theoretically, technically and aesthetically; whereas other green design approaches remain limited by their own confines (e.g. the set of criteria in rating systems such as LEED or BREEAM, carbon profiling quantification which has limited prescriptiveness, lifecycle analysis, ecoengineering gadgetry, etc.).

Yeang attended courses in ecology at the Department of Environmental Biology at Cambridge University (under Professor J.W.L. Beament). Becoming a member of the British Ecological Society, he committed his entire professional life to the pursuit of an ecological design agenda. His professional mission is declared to be, ',. making our human world and built environment green by design innovation..'.

Credibility is accorded to Yeang's ecodesign work from his over four decades of extensive built experience enabling him to implement his ecodesign propositions. He is professionally registered as an architect (ARB and RIBA [UK], PAM (Malaysia), SIA (Singapore), etc.) since 1972, and has seen to completion over a dozen bioclimatic and eco high-rise buildings, several thousand dwellings (terraced houses), over two million sq.ft. of interior design space, numerous ecomasterplans and ecocity designs and in totality has completed over a hundred building projects of all types (high-rise apartments, retail complexes, hotels, offices, mixed-use developments, industrial buildings, educational buildings, hospitals, etc.). Yeang has designed buildings and ecocity masterplans worldwide including New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Canada, China, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, UK, Malaysia and China.

Inventing the 'Bioclimatic Skyscraper' and passive-mode low-energy climate-responsive building design

His early ecodesign work began with applying bioclimatic or climate-responsive principles to building design to create low-energy passive-mode buildings. He regards this approach as the starting basis for ecodesign and that by being climate-responsive also engenders 'critical regionalist' features where the climate responses of the design links it to its loality. This bioclimatic work subsequently became the underlying armature for his ecological design agenda.

The emblematic 'Roof-Roof' House (1985), his own signature house (in Ampang near Kuala Lumpur) is one of his early experimental bioclimatic built work that remains his more important and instructively relevant building in his body of work. The dwelling with perhaps over ambitiously too many experiments within a single built form, has an identifiable dramatic curved louvered upper umbrella-structure as an 'environmental filter' that serves as a solar-filtering and shading device as a second roof (hence its name 'Roof-Roof') over the building's lower roof terrace. The large louvres are angled to let in the morning sun but keep out the hot mid-day and western sun. It has side 'wind wing-walls' at the south side (nb. a device that later influenced the design of the natural ventilation devices used in his Menara UMNO Tower (Penang) which deflect cooling breezes sideways into the dining and living spaces. On the east is a crucially positioned swimming-pool that further functions as an evaporative-cooling device to cool the predominantly easterly breeze before entering the immediately adjoining internal living spaces. This thoughtful small building, viscerally detailed might be regarded as the quintessential prototype for bioclimatic climate-responsive architecture. Its built form and ideas greatly influenced Yeang's later work.

Yeang next turned his fertile attention to applying bioclimatic and passive-mode principles to high-rise tower design, a built form that he considers requires revisioning. He contended that this intensive builtform will not go away overnight because of the economic basis for its existence arising from increasing urban high land values, the need to accommodate rapid urban growth, etc. He sought to find ecologically benign ways to make this built form green. He built several experimental climate-responsive and ecodesigned towers from the mid 1970s to present day (see Plaza Atrium with the giant wind-scoop, Menara Boustead with planted sky-terraces, Plaza IBM with the continuous stepped-planter system, Central Plaza with its solar oriented facade).

His signature Mesiniaga Tower (for the IBM franchise) is regarded as his most didactic bioclimatic and prototype climate-responsive tower, where all his earlier experimental ideas from the previous tower projects are bought together here in one single built form, such as the positioning of the elevator core as a solar buffer at the tower's hot side, the critical placement of toilets and stairwells to have natural ventilation opportunities (low energy), solar-path guided sun-shade design (climate-responsive facade design), the use of evaporative-cooling at the uppermost roof level which has an overhead louvered canopy that provides a framework for future PV cells, vegetated and stepped facade-recessed sky-terraces as interstitial semi-enclosed spaces for office users. This building with functional construction details received several awards including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (1993), a citation from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and others.

Yeang continued to extend these early bioclimatic passive-mode design ideas to other low and medium-rise building types, which he now further incorporates confidently ecodesign strategies from his earlier Cambridge doctorate research, applied to a variety of building types in other climatic zones such as in cold and temperate climates with variable seasonal changes.

Largely the result of these high-rise experiments and his landmark book, The Skyscraper, Bioclimatically Considered (John Wiley & Sons, 1997) Yeang is credited as the inventor of the 'bioclimatic skyscraper' as a genre of the tall building type. University of Washington's Professor Udo Kulterman states, “..Professor Ken Yeang is internationally renowned as the 'father' of the sustainable bioclimatic building..".

The Actor Brad Pitt in the PBS documentary, design/e2 (2006) refers to Yeang's work, '..wind, rain and sun in the minds of most architects, they are enemies. But what if buildings can utilise and respond to the conditions of the environment? What if the urban environment itself became a living breathing organism? For Ken Yeang it is...'.

Rethinking skyscraper design as a 'Vertical Theory of Urban Design'

Around the 1990s, Yeang began to develop ideas for designing the high-rise with the intriguing proposition of looking at the high-rise typology as vertical green urbanism. He sought to reinvent the skyscraper typology as 'vertical urban design'. These novel ideas are presented in his book, Reinventing the Skyscraper: A Vertical Theory of Urban Design (John Wiley & Sons, 2002), which he authored as a sequel to his earlier, The Skyscraper: Bioclimatically Considered (John Wiley & Sons. 1997).

His idea was to invert the high-rise typology, now designed as a 'city-in-the-sky', or what he refers as 'vertical urban design' which he first exemplified in his landmark high-rise library in Singapore, the 120m-high National Library (2005). The building features large 40m high 'public realms-in-the sky' in the form of two verdantly landscaped 'skycourt gardens', and at the ground plane an open-to-the-sky public plaza (for cultural and festival activities) that bioclimatically serves as an evaporative cooling device to the public realm, upper-level multiple sky-bridges that link the building's two blocks (one regular-shaped block containing the library's collections and a 'banana-shaped' block for the library's programming activities) both placed within a naturally-ventilated atrium covered by a louvered canopy roof over the entire built form serving as its 'fifth facade', two multi-volume reading rooms at the sides of the collections block, an uppermost promontory viewing pod. The building's built form has an organic geometry in Yeang's on-going explorations to derive an ecological aesthetic. The building is well built without being elaborately detailed. The building is BCA-rated Green Mark Platinum.

Yeang's ideas for a 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 in his green agenda for design buildings as 'constructed living systems' (see his 'biodiversity targets matrix' in the GyeonGi Masterplan, Seoul, Korea). The building has an innovative ecologically-linked vegetated ramp and pedestrian walkway that is 1.3 km in length as a linear parkscape, that is punctuated by sky garden terraces as it reaches each of the building's corners, and further ink with the mid-level roof garden and the uppermost-level roof garden.

His ideas for this vertical linear park and vertical urbanism were first explored in his unbuilt EDITT Tower (Waterloo Road, Singapore). This idea is further developed in his Solaris building which has an 'ecocell' (a green integrative device first presented in his masterplan for Kowloon Waterfront, Hong Kong). The Solaris has side 'rain-check' glazed-walls at the ground floor facades as a non-airconditoned space, automated glass-louvres over the central atrium what are sensor-operable to naturally ventilate the atrium and the ground floor. The building is also BCA-rated Green Mark Platinum.

The Solaris' vertical linear park idea then led to his concept of the continuous 'green ecoinfrastructure', a device that enables a vital ecological nexus between the built form and across its landscape, that became a crucial biodiversity component in all his subsequent masterplanning and ecocity design work (e.g. the iconic SOMA Masterplan in Bangalore, India) and in his architecture (e.g. the Spire Edge Tower in Gurgaon, India, completion c. 2012). This green ecoinfrastructure concept led to his developing a unifying platform for ecomasterplanning that is the "weaving together of the 'four ecoinfrastructures' into a unified system" (see below).

Yeang worked on the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital Extension (London, UK) (completed 2011) as a hyper green healthcare facility. The building has a corner mixed-mode flue-wall (providing natural ventilation during the mid-seasons to the Walt Disney operated ground floor cafe), a sedum-planted roof, various low energy building systems (CHP, etc.), use of green materials, etc. The building is BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, UK) rated 'excellent'.

Theoretical basis of work and impact on architecture

The most significant impact of Yeang's work on architecture might be contended to be his revisiting of architectural design to be now no longer as designing architecture simply as synthetic and inanimate objects, but as the complex creation of built structures as 'constructed living systems', that he contends must of course also address other user programmatic functions such as exceptionally fulfilling user needs, creating vitally experiential and pleasurable spaces, etc. Yeang now applies this concept of designing architecture as 'built ecological habitats' to all his work. This might be regarded as taking ecodesign to its next level - redefining the relationship of our human-made synthetic built systems with the ecology of the landscape enabling a higher level of biointegration.

He recognized over 4 decades ago that human's callous environmental devastations and contamination of the natural environment will adversely affect the planet's natural balance, its ecosystems biodiversity and its biospheric processes (causing global warming and climate change). This led him to do research in this field for his doctorate in ecological design and planning at Cambridge University (UK) in the early 1970s.

We might contend that in reviewing Yeang's oeuvre of design, built and theoretical work, his most important and instructive contribution to ecological design is his advancing the landmark macro ecology-based landuse planning approach of one of his mentors, the landscape architect Professor Ian McHarg (University of Pennsylvania) and then extending and articulating this ecomasterplannng work from its large-scale urban planning scale with its ecology-based approach to the 'micro level' of architectural design at the scale of the built form. This was an endeavour that McHarg had sought to do for his architect colleagues but unable to achieve, likely limited by being an landscape architect.

Continuing to carry out a research programme on ecodesign in-house within his professional practice and undertaken over several decades, Yeang uniquely applies his research outcomes concurrently in his built work. This progressively developing body of work led Yeang to being recognized internationally as a pioneer, advocate, writer and innovator in authentic ecological design. By the mid 1990s both private and public sector clients worldwide, dissatisfied with the limitations of conventional accreditation systems (LEED, BREEAM, etc.) and with the ecoengineering-hardware based design approach, sought Yeang for their signature (iconic) ecodesigned architecture projects, ecomasterplans and large scale ecocity designs.

Yeang's design work is characterized by their ideas-driven builtform where each design usually expounds one or more of his newly invented eco systemic or technical ideas pn or novel devices (such as the eco land-bridge and the eco-undercroft in the Guangzhou masterplan, China), the 'ecocell' (in the Kowloon Waterfront Masterplan, Hong Kong), the 'green ecoinfrastructure' (in the SOMA Masterplan, India, the continuous green-wall (in DiGi Data Centre in Shah Alam, Malaysia), the 'Vertical Linear Park' (in the Solaris building, in Singapore) and others.

His recent work explores the concept of 'ecomimicry' as designing the human built environment as constructed ecosystems that mimic the processes, structure and attributes of ecosystems, such as ecosystem biological structure, ecosystem materials recycling, increasing efficient energy use, etc. ‘Ecomimicry’ is a term he is held to have invented, adapted from ‘biomimicry’. This is physical, structural and systemic mimicry, and not to be mistaken with a simplistic 'visual' mimicry which he regards as superficial. This work is developed from his earlier research (in his Cambridge doctoral dissertation, 1974) on the use of biological analogies in design, or 'bionics' (see his paper in Architectral Association Quarterly (AAQ) 1972).

Fundamental to Yeang's design work is an ecological nexus as an ecoinfrastructure within the built structure. All of Yeang’s architecture and ecomasterplans have an internal as well as an external ecological connectivity within the built forms or masterplans that is connected to the landscape at the ground plane and where possible to the hinterland's natural landscape, and which further seek a benign and seamless biointegration between human activities and its built systems with the surrounding ecosystems in the landscape (e.g. in the Zorlu Masterplan, Istanbul, Turkey). He draws a systemic analogy here with 'prosthesis' in surgery with designing for biointegration of our synthetic constructed systems with their host organism. He identifies three levels of designing for biointegration: physical, systemic, temporal.

Most of the current generation of architects and engineers approach “green” design and construction through cleantech ecoengineering ('ecogadgetry') or simply through compliance to green accreditation systems. To Yeang, while these practices are relevant and can be progressive, they do not constitute green design in an environmentally comprehensive and inclusive way inherent in an ecologically-based approach.

Yeang states, “..it is easy to be misled or seduced by technology and to think that if we assemble enough eco-gadgetry (e.g. in the form of solar collectors, photovoltaic cells, biological recycling systems, building-automation systems and double-skin facades, etc.) in one single building that this can automatically be considered ecological architecture..". Yeang contends that although these technologies are commendable ecoengineering systems, they are merely useful components towards an ecological architecture and achieving an ecological outcome. Yeang's asserts that ecological design is not just about cleantech or ecoengineering or carbon neutral systems; but that ecotechnologies and engineering must be integrated with and be influenced by the ecology, climate and physical conditions of the site.

Yeang sees our existent built environment as having alienated humans from nature which needs to be rectified. He defines ecodesign as 'achieving a benign and seamless biointegration of our built environment and human activities with the natural environment', He sees this biointegration function to include enhancing biodiversity, repairing human-caused fragmented ecosystems, enhancing ecological nexus (through devices such as eco landbridges, eco undercrofts, vertical green walls and landscaping), use of ecocells, use of constructed wetlands, repairing ecologically fragmented territory by ecological corridors and fingers to provide an ecological nexus to connect to the landscape and to the hinterland minimising disruptions with adjoining ecosystems, maintaining sensitive ecobalance, enhancing existent urban greenery, reducing or having zero dependency on non-renewable sources of energy, designing for water conservation and management, providing sustainable drainage systems, using green building materials that are recyclable, reusable and re-integratable into the environment, and others. His recent advances (see below) include designing built systems as 'living systems' through designing to create constructed habitats (in the Gyeongi Masterplan, Seoil, Korea).

Many mistakenly regard Yeang’s work as simply placing vegetation in his builtforms or as just creating an ecological nexus (continuous link) within his builtforms to enhance local biodiversity. Yeang’s work does much more than just that. What is unique is that his buildings and ecomasterplans are total 'living systems', designed as constructed ecosystems requiring the creation of new habitats within and around the development, involving the matching of selected native species with these constructed habitats, setting their ‘biodiversity targets’, and providing physical conditions within these habitats to enable them to survive over the seasons of the year. In achieving this, his built work become more than just ‘vertically-landscaped architecture’ but are in effect constructed ‘living systems’ (See pages 252-253 in Hart, Sara, 'Ecoarchitecture – The Work of Ken Yeang', publ. John Wiley & Sons, UK, 2011). This designing of developments as living systems differentiates his work from the work of those who imitiate his work by just placement of planting within their builtforms.

One of his key contribution to ecomasterplanning is his development of a 'platform' for designing ecomasterplans and ecocities. The approach involves the establishing by design, a total living system that is both interactive and functional through designing the biointegration of 'four ecoinfrastructural armatures' into an overall coherent system: 1) the 'green infrastructure' (which he describes as 'nature's utilities') which includes ecological corridors and networks that link existent and new open spaces and the various habitats for fauna and flora, for natural resource management and integrated urban food production systems, etc., 2) the 'grey infrastructure' which includes cleantech ecoengineering systems such as sustainable energy systems, transportation/movement systems, sewage systems, materials recycling systems (including DFD or 'Designing For Disassembly’ construction), bioclimatic enclosural systems, green hardscapes and other green engineering utilities; 3) the 'blue infrastructure' which encompasses hydrological management, the 'closing' of the water cycle, water conservation and management, grey water reuse. rainwater harvesting, sustainable drainage including bioswales, filtration strips, black water treatment, detention ponds as storm water management, etc. 4) the 'red infrastructure' being sustainable human ways of life and societal activities which include creating new green lifestyles, providing new sustainable food production and distribution systems, human laws and legislative systems, revisioning existent socio-economic, industrial and political systems into sustainable systems, etc.

This novel approach to ecocity design and ecomasterplanning provides an indeterminate general framework that enables an inclusivity of constantly changing complex factors with a flexibility that allows for obsolescence while encouraging innovation (See page 18 in Hart, Sara (2011), Ecoarchitecture – The Work of Ken Yeang, Publ. John Wiley & Sons, UK; and Yeang, K. (2009), Ecomasterplanning, Publ. John Wiley & Sons, UK).

Yeang is uniquely both a theoretician and a designer. Few architects are able to do both. It is this theoretical rigorousness that firmly underpins and legitimises his architecture and planning work and which gives critical substance that anchors his ecodesign work, absent in that of others. Yeang's work on the theory of ecodesign and its advancement is where Yeang has significantly contributed and advanced this field of endeavor. His earlier Cambridge doctoral dissertation presents a unifying comprehensive theoretical model for ecodesign, defining its prime factors as four sets of interrelated 'environmental interactions', which he describes in the form of a mathematical partitioned-matrix of four sets of interdependent environmental interactions. This theoretical model served as the underlying guiding framework for all his subsequent ecodesign and ecomasterplanning work.

The pursuit of an aesthetic for ecoarchitecture

Yeang’s single minded pursuit of ecodesign and ecomasterplanning and their aesthetics for close to four decades have influenced countless architects and professionals whose work impinges on the environment not just in the way they approach design, planning and the natural environment but aesthetically (greatly encouraged by his former PhD Supervisor at Cambridge University, Professor John Frazer) – in asking what a green building and masterplan should look like?

What is particularly motivating in Yeang's work is this original eco aesthetic, as an aspect of ecodesign that is close to Yeang’s heart. Yeangs contends that an ecological architecture should look natural and green, making nature and its processes visible in the biointegration of the synthetic physical components of building with the ecology of the land. Much of existent architecture and masterplans elsewhere that lay claim to be green are simply commonly-styled or iconically-styled builtforms stuffed internally with ecoengineering gadgetry. Yeang contends that an ecoarhitecture and an ecocity should look 'alive' like a living system, not 'de-natured', and not be nor look predominantly inorganic, artificial and synthetic. Yeang asserts that ecoarchitecture and ecomasterplans demand their own 'style'. It is this green ecoaesthetic in Yeang's architecture that brought considerable international attention to his work and to his selection as architect of choice.

This work in a relentless pursuit of an original biointegrated 'ecological aesthetic' may be Yeang’s other significant contribution to this field.

Because ecodesign in the 1970s did not have the benefit of prior research or theoretical models and frameworks, Yeang early years involved doing empirical research, experimental design, and investigative studies of ecological processes that he could replicate or mimic in his humanmade structures. His early research work is evident in several of his key books including, Designing with Nature (McGraw-Hill, 1995) (see above), The Skyscraper, Bioclimatically Considered: A Design Primer (John Wiley & Sons, 1997), The Green Skyscraper: The Basis for Designing Sustainable Intensive Buildings (Prestel, 1999), Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design (John Wiley & Sons, 2006), Eco-Masterplanning (John Wiley & Sons, 2009), Eco Design Dictionary (an Illustrated Reference with co-author Lillian Woo (Taylor and Francis, 2009)). He is currently researching for a monograph, Ecomimesis: Bases for Designing the Built Environment, on the mimicry of the ecological properties and attributes of ecosystems (Taylor and Francis).

Few architects design as well as build, teach, research and write – Yeang’s does all these prolifically and these in aggregate lends further credibility to his work.

There have also been several monographs authored by others on Yeang’s work since 1989 (Robert Powell, Leon van Schaik, Ivor Richards and others). The most recent is, Ecoarchitecture – The Work of Ken Yeang, authored by Sara Hart (John Wiley & Sons, 2011).

Yeang has lectured extensively in over 30 countries at conferences and schools of architecture to proselytise his ideas. He is the Distinguished Plym Professor (University of Illinois at Champaign, Urbana), and has been the Professor of Practice (Texas A & M University); the Graham Willis Professor (University of Sheffield), the Provost’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar (University of Southern California); Advisory Professor (Tongji University, Shanghai), Honorary Professor (University of Hong Kong) and Adjunct Professor (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of Hawaii, University of New South Wales, Curtin University, University of Malaya, Deakin University); and Visiting Eminent Scholar (Florida Atlantic University).

He has taught senior students at design workshops at the University of Hong Kong (China); University of Nebraska; Louisiana State University; University of Illinois, Florida Atlantic University, (USA); University of Cardiff (Wales); University of Sheffield (UK); University of Newcastle (UK), Deakin University; Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of New South Wales (Australia), NUS (Singapore) and Inha University (Korea).

Architectural design: aesthetics, awards, key projects

Ken Yeang has created outstanding designs throughout his 40 plus years professional career and continues to develop his original and fresh approach to the forms and systems of his buildings while pursuing theoretical and technical advancements and the ecological architectural style for ecodesign – as a new “green” aesthetic.

His eco aesthetic does not have the shape or form that in any way resemble existent architectural styles. His aesthetic might be regarded as an independent style that encompasses ecodesign holistically and is derived from an understanding and inclusion of ecological systems and processes of its locality. This is an emergent authentic ecological aesthetic whose shapes and forms have a nexus with adjoining ecosystems, that harmonise with the site’s ecology, enhance local biodiversity, minimize polluting emissions and other negative consequences, and are more energy and water efficient and carbon neutral than conventional buildings. Yeang's work affirms that ecodesigned architecture and masterplans can have a green aesthetic. Lord Norman Foster of Thames Bank states, '.. Ken Yeang has developed a distinctive architectural vocabulary that extends beyond questions of style to confront issues of sustainability and how we can build in harmony of the natural world..' (2011).

Yeang’s recent projects exemplify the maturing of his design work with a growing complexity and confidence in creating an ecoarchitecture with an evident luxuriant greening that defines and becomes his own identifiable architectural style. With the high level of verdant landscape in his builtforms, whether externally (or placed internally within the builtform in his projects in temperate and cold climates), his ecoaesthetic is described by his colleagues as 'indeterminate', 'hairy', 'constructed habitats'. 'vertical landscaping'.

Yeang's design and built work have been recognised by the many awards received since 1989 (over 40) that include the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (for the Menara Mesiniaga, an IBM franchise), the Prince Claus Award (Netherlands), the UIA (International Union of Architects) August Perret Award, the Malaysian Institute of Architects Gold Medal (2011) and its design awards, the WACA (World Association of Chinese Architects) Gold Medals (for the Solaris Building, 2011 and for the National Library Singapore), the Government of Malaysia’s ‘Darjah Mulia Pangkuan Negen (DMPN) award that carries the official title of ‘Dato’ (2003, generally regarded as the Malaysian equivalent of the UK’s OBE), The Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the Holcim Regional Award for Sustainability (Switzerland) (for the Putrajaya Phase 2C5 building, Malaysia, 2011), the Merdeka Award (for the 'environment' category, 2011), an award from the Malaysian government regarded as its national equivalent of the Nobel prize.

Menara Mesiniaga in Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.

Yeang has completed over 200 projects since 1975. His benchmark buildings, projects and their innovations include:

Exhibitions and Media

Yeang has exhibited his ecodesign work in galleries and museums internationally since 1985: from Tokyo (Ginza Pocket Park, Tokyo Designer's Space at Axis Building, Roppongi) and Nara in Japan, Berlin (Aedes) Germany, New York (MOMA) and Washington DC (Building Museum) USA, London (Building Centre) UK, Rotterdam (NAI) Netherlands, dating from 1985 to present date. The German Government's IFA will exhibit Yeang's work together with Landscape Architect Seksan at the IFA Gallery in Stuttgart, opening 18 October 2012.

Yeang and his ecodesigns have been featured in a number of special broadcasts, including BBC (UK) television and radio, NHK (Japan), Asia Discovery Channel (Asia), PBS (USA) ‘design=e2’ (in which the actor Brad Pitt refers to Yeang's work, '...wind, rain and the sun, in the minds of most architects, they are the enemies.. but what if buildings can utilise and respond to the conditions of the environment? What if that urban environment becomes a living, breathing organism? To Ken Yeang it is..'). Some of these can be viewed in YouTube.

Corporate and Business

A not commonly known fact that may explain Yeang's success as a professional architect and his ability to maintain a pole position as an innovative leading ecodesigner is his business acumen acquired from his attendance in his early years of courses in business management at the Malaysian Institute of Management and the Singapore Institute of Management, and a short course at Harvard Business School. Upon his mother's untimely demise in 2002, she made him in her will the Trustee and CEO of the family's property holding, investment and development company, The Yeangs Sdn. Bhd., which he continues to successfully run and grow in tandem with his architect firm. Yeang had also served as a Board member of the MBf Unit Trust and the PAM Education Fund. His CPD lectures on 'business strategies' at the Malaysian Institute of Architects and SIngapore Institute of Architects are popularly attended.

Chronology of key completed projects

Current projects under construction

Other projects

External links