Greening Up High, continued

FuturArc: What about the clients, what’s motivating them to build a green building?
Yeang: It’s an ethical issue really.

FuturArc: But a lot of people don’t observe that ethical issue.
Yeang: A lot of people aren’t ethical people. It’s as simple as that. (It is not possible) to justify (green buildings) on a commercial basis. The amount of savings on energy is minimal.... So people say, why bother?

I want to (design green buildings) because it’s the important thing to do. If you don’t do green buildings, then.... Basically the way I see it, we really have to change. We need a new model for our lifestyle. The way we’ve been living, we can’t go on living like this forever. So when are people going to change? I don’t know. In terms of energy ... we’ve gone past the halfway point (of supply). So energy will become increasingly more expensive, and we’re losing the ozone layer.

I do it because it’s an ethical issue. It’s something I do because I believe in it. Clients think they should (build green buildings) because it’s the ethical thing to do. But for me to go and tell a commercial client to go and do it, they say, oh well, Ken Yeang is experimenting with my money.

FuturArc: It seems the idea (of green building) is gaining a little bit of purchase.
Yeang: Well, there are a lot of wannabes.

FuturArc: What’s the difference between a wannabe and the real thing?
Yeang: A deep green. The wannabes don’t really understand it. So they design a building to make it green. They can’t make it green, they get some engineers to make it green.

FuturArc: So they do the first few steps...
Yeang: No, no. They don’t really understand what a green building is.

FuturArc: But do you think the understanding is growing? Do you see more people doing it?
Yeang: I don’t know. I wish there were. It hasn’t got me a whole lot of business. I’ve lost a few projects.

FuturArc: Your desire to be green.
Yeang: My desire to be green. Green design is not as simple as it looks. It’s really quite complex. So for these people... I don’t think they really understand green design. But you know, that’s the way the world works.

FuturArc: Do you think they’re going to understand? Do you think green design is coming up in schools?
Yeang: In some schools, yes.

FuturArc: You have a tone of cautious optimism.
Yeang: I’ve spent 35 years of my life working on this. And you really have to start studying ecological systems. And a lot of architects don’t understand ecology because ecology is not taught at schools of architecture.

FuturArc: So that’s where the most significant change could happen.
Yeang: That’s where the most significant change could happen. I also studied ecological land-use planning and that is a totally different approach to looking at site planning. It pains me immensely when I see a site plan and somebody says, it is green, and all these key factors are not taken into consideration.

Maybe there are about two dozen people in the world today, maybe more, maybe about three dozen people, who really know everything about green design.

FuturArc: And did they go about it the same way you did? Through ecological design?
Yeang: Yes.... You see, there are so few of us doing this work, that anybody who’s doing any work in this field is doing valuable work.