| A presentation by the internationally acclaimed Malaysian architect
and writer Ken Yeang will launch the Texas A&M College
of Architecture’s new Frederick E. Giesecke Lecture Series
beginning at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6 at the Langford Architecture
Center’s Preston Geren Auditorium.
Yeang is renowned worldwide for his groundbreaking work throughout
South Asia, developing environmentally friendly design strategies
for high quality ecologically sustainable, or ”green,” high-rise
buildings. His seminal book, “Bioclimatic Skyscrapers,” the
first of many, was published in 1994. In 1999, he was awarded
the prestigious Auguste Perret Prize by the International Union
of Architects.
“Ken Yeang pioneered the application of bioclimatic principles
to the high-rise building as a new genre of the skyscraper typology,” said
J. Thomas Regan, dean of the College of Architecture. “In
a world increasingly assailed by pollution and scarcity of natural
resources, Dr. Yeang has set a much needed example and we are
honored to have him visit our college and share his insight with
our students and faculty.”
In addition to his Nov. 6 lecture, Regan said Yeang’s
three-day visit will include student design reviews and meetings
with faculty and doctoral students to discuss collaborative research
initiatives and the possibility of creating a Center for EcoDesign
at the Texas A&M College of Architecture.
“Yeang’s work challenges society and environmental
design — philosophically, psychologically, technically,
aesthetically, politically and culturally,“ Regan continued. “He
is an inventive and prolific architect who is radically changing
not only the face of architecture, but environmentalism as well.”
Over his 30-year career, Yeang has delivered a dozen high-rise
towers and more than 200 projects through his private Kuala Lumpur-based
practice, TR Hamzah & Yeang, a company he founded in 1976
with fellow Architectural Association School of Architecture
graduate Tengku Robert Hamzah, a prince in the Malay royal family.
Before staring his firm, Yeang earned a doctorate in ecological
design from Cambridge University. In addition to his dozen books,
monographs and publications, Yeang has more than 40 letters behind
his name and holds no less than 12 teaching positions and professorships
at universities spanning the globe. Though he moved to London
in 2005 to become director of Llewlyn Davies Yeang, a multidisciplinary
firm of urban designers, architects and landscape architects,
he remains a principal at his Malaysian firm, which has grown
to include offices in Beijing, Sydney and Germany.
Yeang continues to conduct cutting-edge research, design and
development in the bioclimatic design of tall buildings and has
several patents pending for ventilation engineering. Among his
key projects are the high-rise National Library Board building
in Singapore, the 40-story Eco-Tower at Elephant & Castle,
the 24-story IBM Building in Malaysia, the 15-story Mesiniaga
Building (IBM franchise) in Malaysia, and the Wirrina Cove Condominium
in Australia.
Yeang has received over 20 awards including the 1995 Aga Khan
Award for Architecture and the Royal Australian Institute of
Architects International Award in 1997 and 1999. His work has
been published extensively in the international press.
Yeang’s design expertise lies in his ecological approach
to the design of large projects and buildings, which considers
their impacts on the site's ecology and the building's use of
energy and materials over its life cycle. Much of his early work
pioneered passive low-energy design of “bioclimatic skyscrapers.”
Because of population pressures and site ratios, Yeang considers
skyscrapers as inevitable and he has spent his career refuting
the conventional wisdom that tall buildings are inherently destructive
to the environment.
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 architect William McDonough, another leader in sustainable
design, 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.
“In practice, architectural design is a craft, and a variable
one at that,” wrote Yeang. “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.”
Other noteable Ken Yeang buildings 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; Dubai Towers Master Plan, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (under
construction); and Jumptown Tower, Portland, Oregon (proposed).
Among the many books Yeang has written or co-authored in the
field of tall buildings are “Designing With Nature,” 1995; “The
Skyscraper Bioclimatically Considered; a Design Primer,” 1996; “The
Green Skyscraper: The Basis for Designing Sustainable Intensive
Buildings,” 1999; “Reinventing the Skyscraper: A
Vertical Theory of Urban Design,” 2002; and his latest
book, “Ecodesign: Instruction Manual, 2005. He is also
currently co-writing “The Encyclopedia of the Skyscraper” with
Antony Wood.
Yeang is vice chairman of the Council of Tall Buildings and
Urban Habitat and has served on the Council of the Royal Institute
of British Architects, as president of the Malaysian Institute
of Architects, and as chairman of Architects Regional Council
Asia. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute
of Architects.
The Frederick E. Giesecke Lecture Series was established in
2005 with a generous gift from Fort Worth, Texas architect Preston
M. Geren, Jr. ’45 , to honor his grandfather and founder
of the architecture program at Texas A&M University; the
first such program in Texas.
| 
