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Foreword

Form, in the world of design, is discussed as style, shape, geometry, or reduced to a question

of functionality. But form, really, is a structure of relationships. This structure, made manifest, is the

configuration of pathways and nodes, thresholds, and edge conditions that regulate flow and exchange.

Every designed entity 'building or neighbourhood' is a spatial structure that dictates where people move,

where they pause, and what they do. There might be a parallel structure for how non-human species

do the same. Overlaid onto this are pathways for abiotic flows of energy, water, materials in the built

environment. Flows inside connect to flows outside, beyond boundaries of shell and site.

Ken Yeang, arguably, is one of few architects to link climate and now ecology explicitly to the

morphology of form and its underlying systemic structure. Yeang's bioclimatic model of the 1980s and

more recently his ecological model have re-imagined the arrangement of parts: ‘space, skin, tectonics,

environmental systems, and geographical siting’, and re-articulated the whole in service of multiple

ecological outcomes.

His early work on bioclimatic design was in part feature-based (sunshades, sky-courts, greenery)

and in part rule-based (geometry, orientation, local climatic factors), aimed at creating comfort and

reducing energy demand. Passive design had become marginalised in the 1970s and 1980s when the

ubiquitous skyscraper, sheathed in airtight skin and projecting an appearance of modernity, could be built

in any city, any climate. It was getting harder to make a case for permeable façades that would let in the

wind and light. Yeang's bioclimatic skyscraper attempted this and, in the process, offered a counterpoint

to the International Style. Spatially, the plan had passive- and climate-controlled spaces side by side;

in some spaces, occupants could toggle between the two. Parts of the building were surrendered to

semi-outdoor sky courts that formed an edge condition; service cores became thermal buffers to the

East–West sun; the plan and section were intersected with pathways for natural air movement; and the

facade was an arrangement of recesses and protuberances that mediated between indoor and outdoor.

These factors and features became emblems in Yeang's work in the 1980s and 1990s.

Yeang's current approach to the ecology of buildings came later and brought to this vocabulary

several emerging strands of science: ecosystem services (mimicry of nature's processes), ecosystem

habitats (greenery as pathway and patch), design metabolism (waste management and recycling), and

x FOREWORD