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Introduction

The publication of this book on ecological architecture comes at an unprecedented

time, as humanity’s impact on the environment has never been so significant. We sit

at a crossroads in our relationship with climate change. The UN Secretary-General

warned in 2018 that life on Earth faced a ‘direct existential threat’ if global warming

is not kept under 1.5°C, whilst the Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom

have declared an ‘Environment and Climate Emergency’ amidst an ongoing series

of protests by the group calling itself Extinction Rebellion. It is increasingly apparent

that the air we breathe, the water we drink, the earth we plant in, the food we eat,

and − crucially − the overall integration of our natural and built environments have all

been compromised. This can arguably be largely attributed to decades of governments

marginalising environmental policies and societies undervaluing ecological designs.

In this context, Ken Yeang’s prescience as an architect is impressive and highly

judicious; his doctorate in the early 1970s was titled, ‘Theoretical Framework for

the Ecological Design and Planning of the Built Environment’. This topic drove his

dissertation (which was agreed with John Meunier, then Head of Graduate Studies at

Cambridge University) and became his life‘s agenda when he started a practice. We

share some academic lineage, both of us having been students at the Department of

Architecture there, influenced by many of the same minds from the faculty, such as

Professor Marcial Echenique (who became head of the Department), Dr. Dean Hawkes

(who left to become Professor at the School of Architecture at Cardiff University), and

Peter Carl.

After university, Ken continued to further pursue and develop his work on ecological

design on both theoretical and practical levels. He developed a model framework through

the biological integration of sets of ecoinfrastructures, namely natural, technological,

water management, hydrology systems, and societal factors. In practice, he was able

to interpret this abstract theory into physical forms through his architecture and his

masterplans, and his built projects from over 40 years ago and was already looking at

ways to integrate designed systems more benignly with nature. Through both passive

and controlled methods of reducing energy demands, he has for decades looked at

making buildings and communities run as complete ecosystems, with minimal external

energy supply. It is evident that developing those theoretical subsystems is integral to

making his architectural designs fully credible.

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