![]() In 2005, he also became Design Director and subsequently Chairman of its sister firm in the UK, Llewelyn Davies Yeang, a firm originally founded by Lord Richard Llewelyn Davies. Hamzah and Yeang Sdn Bhd., first formed by Tengku Dato' Robert Hamzah, his contemporary at the AA School in London. He then successfully extended the application of these principles to the high-rise building type which led to his being widely regarded as the 'father' or inventor of the 'bioclimatic skyscraper'.ĭato' Yeang is a principal in the firm, T. The approach was also a critical regionalist endeavor, enabling the derivation of a local identity in the architecture where the architecture has a link to its place though relating the builtform to the local climatic conditions. His early built works, adopting climateresponsive bioclimatic principles as passive-mode low-energy design, became a useful armature for his later ecologically sustainable design work. In this regard, it successfully served its purpose as an experimental project." "The house provided a life-size working prototype for my ideas then that subsequently extended to larger scale urban high-rise situations. When I look back, it remains one of my favourites," he says. "It was an experiment in passive mode, low energy bioclimatic concepts and devices. One of the early low energy bioclimatic buildings he built was his own home, the 'Roof- Roof' House in 1984 in Ampang, so called because of its double roofs. Clients soon perceived the obvious benefits.'. This is design that optimises the natural ambient energies of the place where the building is located. It wasn't considered relevant so it was no point pushing it overtly because it was just like hitting my head against a hard wall," he says, '.So I designed green privately and adopted a design approach that was a subset of ecological design, being 'bioclimatic design' which is the designing of buildings as passive low energy structures responsive to local climatic conditions. "Back in then when we first started, I just could not get clients to accept green design. Globally recognised now for his work on developing ecological design and master planning, Dato' Yeang dedicated his professional life to this pursuit and to deriving design methods for the ecological design and master planning of our built environment, over nearly 4 decades of his professional life that delivered over 200 built projects. This is what drives me – serendipity, discovery and invention. Once I decided that this is what my life is all about then everything else fell in place in fulfilling the agenda and achieving this to the best that I can and doing it better than anybody else. ![]() "I have an agenda of the things I want to do in my life – essentially wanting to make the world green through design innovation. Nevertheless I persisted and completed my doctorate in the topic which subsequently became my life's agenda," he says. "In those days I was regarded as a 'longhaired hippie' – as anybody who was interested in green techology and ecology was regarded. ![]() The proposition nevertheless intrigued him and he sought leave to embark instead as a graduate student to do a doctorate in ecological design and planning, which was a pioneering green-field subject at the time. "I became a green architect more by default rather than by design – as did most of the things that happens to me, often fortuitously by chance," he says.Īt the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Architecture, Dato' Yeang started as a Research Assistant to work on the design for the 'Autonomous House' project, a proposal for a residence that is independent and not connected to urban infrastructure and utilities such as sewage, electricity or water.Īfter six months into the project, he concluded that the project lacked a theoretical basis and that much more was required to achieve an ecologically sustainable building. His work on the green agenda started in the 1970s with his doctoral dissertation at the University of Cambridge on ecological design and planning. His secondary schooling was at the Penang Free School in 1962 and completing this at the Cheltenham Boys College in Gloucestershire (UK) in 1966.ĭato' Yeang received his first qualifications in architecture from the Architectural Association School ('AA') in London. He began his primary education at Wellesley Primary School and Westlands School in Penang in 1954. Dato' Dr Ken Yeang's extensive work is a testimony to his success in expanding the ecological horizons of architecture and design.ĭato' Dr Kenneth Yeang was born in Penang in 1948. ![]()
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