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M+, Hong Kong. Museum purchase and gift of T.R. Hamzah & Yeang Sdn. Bhd ., 2017, © T. R. Hamzah & Yeang Sdn. Bhd.
T. R. Hamzah & Yeang Sdn. Bhd. T. R. Hamzah & Yeang 建築事務所
Ken Yeang 楊經文
Model, Menara Mesiniaga (1989–1992), Subang Jaya, Malaysia 馬來西亞梳邦再也Mesiniaga大廈（1989–1992）模型
circa 2003
A pioneering contributor to ecological design, Ken Yeang has influenced the development of ‘green architecture’ worldwide. Yeang’s quest for bio-climatic design through environmental ethics—following his return to Malaysia in 1975— coincided with the discussion of architecture’s cultural identity taking place across Asia in the early 1980s, when architects sought alternative forms and urban knowledge that drew from local and regional contexts. With his model of the ’tropical skyscraper’ as a response to climatic factors, Yeang contributed to the discourses of both sustainability and regionalism.
Yeang’s adaptation of bio-climatic principles began with the Roof-Roof House—his own home, which he used as a testing ground to design a building as a set of enclosures that, in his words, operate as ‘environmental filters’. Sitting beneath an arching trellis structure—a roof above the roof—whose louvres are angled to admit morning light from the east while screening out the hotter afternoon sun, the house is oriented and spatially organised to maximise airflow from easterly winds, with oblique walls to deflect breezes into the interior.
Menara Mesiniaga is a culmination of Yeang’s research towards the skyscraper as an environmentally sustainable typology. Behind its high-tech modernist appearance are passive solar and ventilation solutions. These include a naturally ventilated ground floor, whose planting spirals upwards in a series of small, deeply recessed gardens for shading and reducing heat island effect, and the arrangement of aluminium louvres around the building’s cylindrical facade, responding to the sun’s path. The tower won the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1995 for demonstrating an alternative—on the level of aesthetics and climate-responsiveness—to the curtain-wall skyscraper.
In Search of Southeast Asia through the M+ Collections. M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong, 22 June–30 September 2018
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