The Green Skyscraper

Architectural Review, The, May, 2000 by Francis Duffy

By Ken Yeang. Munich: Prestel. I 999. [pounds]15.95

The skyscraper simply exists, the perfect example of a solution in search of a problem. To an old-fashioned rationalist like me it is somewhat irritating to have to acknowledge that the skyscraper, with surprisingly little dissent, has won the status of a universally recognizable and acceptable phenomenon. For a hundred years the skyscraper has been the strongest of brands. Doubters have had little or no impact on architects, most of whom seem to have assumed that God put them here to erect the tallest skyscraper, the most intelligent skyscraper, or, In the case of Ken Yeang, the greenest skyscraper.

Not that I am against building high per se. There are cultures, economies, locations, climates and purposes for which skyscrapers may make perfect sense today. Hong Kong, with its unusual history and spectacular topography, is one example. However, it is clear that something very much like the reverse is the case in Stockholm. Arguments for and against the skyscraper are usually over-simplified. The architectural profession's own collective, century long, love affair with the skyscraper has generally over weighted the importance of form over function. Perhaps, we have also allowed a particular kind of financing to dominate our thinking about form and function. 'Ours not to reason why', has too often been the architectural norm, not least in the face of developers' greed.

Given this background of shaky assumptions, Yeang has done an excellent job of making a sustainable argument for reinventing the skyscraper as something green, unhermetic and user friendly. He has the huge advantage of speaking as an architect who has already many, highly original, practical -- and very striking -- tall buildings to his credit. His case for the sky-scraper is fundamentally ecological. Low-density buildings waste precious land. Conventional ways of designing the environmental systems of tall buildings, both external and internal, squander precious energy. Strong at the macro scale of environmental economics, Yeang is rather less successful in marshalling arguments that contradict the chronic short-termism of conventional developmental appraisal. His understanding of the micro scale of detailed design options is more impressive than his ability to take advantage of sociologically based arguments for change, now more and more related to new ways of working and to emerging user expectations.

Despite Yeang's Martin Centre-influenced way of expounding his ideas, his vision of a permeable, green, self-sustaining environment is as romantic as technocratic -- a new Malaysian vernacular, updated, rethought and well above the new highways and the trees. And that is the best thing about Yeang's work. Not only is it rational and original but it is being achieved in a part of the world where it is far too common for conventional skyscraper designs, the sweepings of an exhausted and extravagant North American design tradition, to be replicated without any strategic thought.