Ken Yeang
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Dr. Ken Yeang (Chinese: 杨经文/楊經文; pinyin: Yáng Jīngwén) is a prolific Malaysian architect and writer best known for developing environmental design solutions for high-rise buildings in the tropics.
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[edit] Life and career
Born in Penang, Malaysia, Yeang attended Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire, England and received a doctorate in ecological design from Cambridge University. Seeing skyscrapers as inevitable because of population pressures and site ratios, Yeang has spent his career refuting the conventional wisdom that tall buildings are inherently destructive to the environment. As a principle of T.R. Hamzah & Yeang in Kuala Lumpur, Yeang pioneered the passive low-energy design of skyscrapers, what he has called 'bioclimatic' design. In 2005 Ken Yeang became a director of Llewelyn Davies Yeang, a multidisciplinary firm of Urban Designers, Architects and Landscape Architects, from this new base in London Yeang is now able to bring his academic and professional output to a wider audience. He has a number of patents pending for ventilation engineering. He also serves on advisory committees for numerous academic and professional organizations such the ARCHIVE Institute and the Skyscraper Museum both located in NYC.
[edit] Works and architectural philosophy
In 2003, Yeang's work was included in the exhibition "Big & Green: Towards Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century" curated by David Gissen at the National Building Museum [1]
Yeang's 1992 Menara Mesiniaga building in Subang Jaya Selangor, Malaysia is virtually a catalog of his bioclimatic techniques, including daring "vertical landscaping", external louvers to reduce solar heat gain, extensive natural ventilation and lighting, and an "active Intelligent Building" system for automated energy savings.
Like William McDonough, Yeang's concentration on energy conservation and environmental impact is a radical departure from mainstream architecture's view of the profession as an art form. Yeang has written, "In practice, architectural design is a craft, and a variable one at that. Post modernism has successfully shown up the volatile nature of this craft by its unrestrained use of architectural symbolisms, its frivolous multiplication of the surface area of the built envelope, its prodigious use of unnecessary building materials, its indifference to engineering economy, its extravagant use of land, and its irrational subservience to whim and history instead of the allocation and restriction of excessive consumption of energy resources."
Yeang's other projects include:
- Plaza Atrium, Kuala Lumpur, 1981
- Menara Boustead, Kuala Lumpur, 1986
- MBF Tower, Penang, 1993
- Tokyo-Nara Tower, Tokyo, Japan, 1994
- Penggiran Apartment Towers No. 1, Kuala Lumpur, 1996
- UMNO Tower, Penang, 1998
- New National Library of Singapore, Singapore
- Mesiniaga Penang, Penang, 2003
- Jumptown Tower, Portland, Oregon (proposed)
