Ken Yeang

I first became acquainted with the work of Malaysian architect Ken Yeang around fifteen years ago, when I read his book The Skyscraper Bioclimatically Considered. At the time I was working on designing "green" towers for elsewhere in Asia, and his book served as an excellent guide, especially considering how he actually practiced what he preached. That book was not his first book -- and far from his last. Recently I came across what might be his first book: Tropical Urban Regionalism. Though slim, at just under 100 pages, he packs in a lot of visual and textual information, much of which would inform his later books and commissions. Part manifesto, part monograph, the book lays out a dichotomy for enclosing buildings: closed or open, with the first illustrated with the analogy of a thermos flask and the second with louvered sunglasses (this was written in the 1980s, mind you) and a sieve. Yeang's preference is clearly for the latter, which he argues for across four chapters, a couple illustrated with his projects. One standout is the Roof-Roof House, which has a large filter/umbrella roof that shades the outdoor spaces but lets breezes flow across them. The language is clunky and unnecessarily complicated at times, especially for a book aimed at laypeople as much as fellow architects, but Yeang's mix of text and diagrams makes for a compelling argument, if limited in scope to his home country and other tropical ones nearby.… (more)