EcoMasterplanning - Hardcover

In EcoMasterplanning , Ken Yeang provides a comprehensive introduction to the ideas and principles that lie behind the many masterplans that he has designed. In a highly visually driven format, the book illustrates over 30 master plans produced by Yeang. These are accompanied by explanatory diagrams of the ideas and devices used in the masterplans, as well as plans and drawings of the actual plans. The book will feature masterplans designed for sites from around the world, including those for Amsterdam, Gwongzhou, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpar, Kuwait, Macau, Mumbai, Singapore and Vancouver.

This ground-breaking book presents the state-of-the-art approach to masterplanning that is based on environmental principles and provides the basis for the design of masterplans for ecodistricts and ecocities that take into consideration: ecology, sustainable utilities engineering, water management and hydrology, and our human communities and their regulatory systems. Central to the approach is the provision of greenways or ecoinfrastructure as nature's untilties in all the schemes. The ecomasterplanning approach presented here is the culmination of a series of masterplan designs that reflect an experimental developmental process, whereby the design of each builds from the lessons learnt from a previous one. Profusely illustrated, the masterplans in this book, also allude to the author's relentless pursuit of an ecological aesthetic. In Ecomasterplanning, Yeang advocates the systemic biointegration of four infrastructures - the grey as the armature for eco-engineering systems; the blue as the water metabolism of the site and its overall water management; the red being our human spaces, hardscapes and regulatory systems; and the green being 'nature's utilities' - to form a vital ecological infrastructure that is also crucially connected to the ecological systems in the site's hinterland. This 'ecoinfrastructure', as a network of green linking corridors and spaces within a masterplan, not only preserves the natural environment but actively encourages it to thrive. It enables the repairing of ecosystems fragmentation and the creation of a larger habitat for the sharing of resources. This is beneficial not only to many species of flora and fauna, but also to our human communities, tempering the negative impacts of carbon dioxide emissions, noise and air pollution, flooding and urban heat-island effect. Without this ecoinfrastructural nexus within the built environment, any ecocity design that lays claim to being ecological is therefore incomplete - such schemes remain nothing more than clever eco-engineering systems, greened with scattered patches of landscape and roof gardens.