Ken Yeang

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Ken Yeang : biography

1948 – N/A

Yeang worked on the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital Extension (London, UK) (completed 2011) as a 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 rated ‘excellent’.

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

Aesthetics of ecoarchitecture

Yeang pursuit of ecoarchitecture and ecomasterplanning theories, concepts and ideas are carried out in parallel with his explorations for an ecological aesthetic, encouraged by his former PhD Supervisor at Cambridge University, Professor John Frazer, in questioning what a green building and masterplan should look like?

Yeang contends that an ecological architecture should resemble a living system, looking natural and verdant that makes nature and its processes visible in the biointegration of the synthetic physical constituents (abiotic) of the built form with the native fauna, flora (biotic constituents) and the environmental biological processes of the land. He contends that much of existent green architecture and master plans by others elsewhere that lay claim to be sustainable are simply commonly-styled or iconically-styled builtforms stuffed internally with ecoengineering gadgetry and with occasional vegetation in its sky courts. Yeang contends that an ecoarhitecture and an ecocity should be ‘alive’ as a living system, analogous to a constructed ecosystem and not ‘de-natured’ nor look predominantly inorganic, artificial and synthetic.

Yeang asserts that ecoarchitecture and ecomasterplans demand their own identifiable ‘style’. It is this green ecoaesthetic evident in Yeang’s architecture and masterplans that brought international attention to his work. His ecoaesthetic does not have the shape or form that in any way resemble existent architectural styles. This aesthetic is an independent green aesthetic that encompasses ecodesign holistically and which comes from an interpretation, an understanding and the inclusion of ecological constituents and processes of its locality in its built form. We might regard this as an emergent ecological aesthetic, where its shapes and forms have a nexus with adjoining ecosystems, which 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, and other ecodesign attributes. Lord Norman Foster of Thames Bank refers to Yeang’s ecoaesthetics, ‘.. 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).