Reinventing the Skyscraper: A Vertical Theory of Urban Design - Softcover

Yeang, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0470843551 ISBN 13: 9780470843550

Publisher: Academy Press, 2002

Synopsis

Unique treatment of urban design of skyscrapers.
* Includes progressive ideas about vertical landscaping.
* Provides new mapping techniques useful in both conventional and vertical urban design.

About this title

From the Back Cover

This book is invaluable to the reader interested in tall buildings, to architects and engineers seeking a new approach for their design and to investors and developers seeking to create more marketable and habitable high-rise dwellings and skyscraper commercial spaces.

It puts forward Ken Yeang's ideas for the skyscraper as a city-in-the-sky, in a novel design approach that resembles urban design and planning as against the design of a conventional building in a high-rise structure.

The book proposes a new vertical theory of urban design and discusses Yeang's theoretical propositions and design concepts that include those for de-compartmenting the skyscraper's built form, for urban analysis as a three-dimensional matrix and for a strategy to map the land use of the skyscraper. It also suggest ideas for the diversification of vertical land uses, the creation of public realms and places-in-the-sky, vertical landscaping, creating high-rise neighbourhoods, vertical townscape, vertical transportation and accessibility, the skyscraper as an urban ecosystem and other related topics.

The book's many ideas and its theoretical approach radically change the current design approach to tall buildings to make them into more humane environments and be more satisfying to its inhabitants in its endeavour to re-create the ideal conditions at the ground now up in the sky. The book is illustrated by numerous diagrams and illustrations.

This book is a sequel to Yeang's earlier book, The Skyscraper, Bioclimatically Considered (Wiley-Academy).

About the Author

KEN YEANG is an architect and a principal of the firm, Hamzah & Yeang ((r) T. R. Hamzah & Yeang Sdn. Bhd.) which has offices in London and Kuala Lumpur. The firm specializes in the ecological design of large buildings and sites. Its early work pioneers the development of a genre of high-rise building, the bioclimatic skyscraper, as a low-energy climatically-responsive tall building that optimizes passive mode and mixed-mode systems.

The firm's projects and built works include the Mesiniaga Tower (an IBM franchise) in Malaysia which received the Aga Khan Award, the multi-storey National Library Singapore, the Elephant and Castle Eco-Towers in London, and other built works in China and Australia. The firm is a long serving member of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in the USA. Yeang is also the Graham Willis Professor at the University of Sheffield and an Honorary Fellow of the AIA.

Edition details

• Publisher: Academy Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0470843551
• ISBN 13: 9780470843550
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224