Ken Yeang was born in Penang, trained at the Architectural Association in London, and took a Cambridge doctorate with a thesis on incorporating ecological reasoning into the design of the built environment — an argument he has been building ever since, in Kuala Lumpur, at the practice Hamzah & Yeang. His subject is the tropical skyscraper: how a tall building in an equatorial climate can be shaded, cross-ventilated, planted and oriented so that its envelope does the work air conditioning normally does. The devices he standardised — spiralling planted terraces, sunshades sized by solar path, naturally ventilated lift lobbies, the roof-level louvre canopy — first appeared together at Menara Mesiniaga in 1992. The Guardian listed him in 2008 among fifty people who could save the planet.
