Reinventing the Skyscraper presents a refreshing and unique perspective on urban design from the region of Southeast Asia, especially from a practitioner who lives and works in this part of the world. The author, Ken Yeang, has a professional degree in architecture from the Architectural Association and a PhD from Cambridge University. Yeang is a partner in one of the leading architectural firms in Southeast Asia, Hamzah and Yeang, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Yeang is also the Graham Willis Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield in England. This book is a sequel to Yeang’s earlier book, The Skyscraper, Bioclimatically Considered.

The topic of vertical urban design is highly commendable, especially given its lack of popularity within the larger context of contemporary trends towards neo-traditional urban design. The book has an interesting and creative graphic design, and begins on a commendable note “How can we make working, living and all aspects of our life in the high-rise building more palatable?” (p. 6). The question is partially answered just a few pages later: “What is crucially needed is a redefinition for more satisfyingly habitable working and living urban environments: more diverse; greater multiplicity; certainly less regimented; with networks of plazas, parks and enclosed spaces in the sky” (p.12). Yeong proposes to reinvent the skyscraper as a city in the sky, a novel design approach that resembles urban design and planning, as opposed to its design as a conventional high-rise structure. The objective is to give it a humane environment more satisfying to its inhabitants, in its endeavors to create up in the sky ideal conditions like those on the ground.
Reinventing the Skyscraper is divided into 12 different chapters, covering such topics as premises for a vertical theory, the tall building typology and cities, de-compartmentalizing the skyscraper’s built form, urban design framework and vertical land-use mapping, diversification of vertical land uses, creating neighborhoods in the sky, the skyscraper as an urban ecosystem, and the new skyscraper. The book is illustrated with diagrams and images of projects designed by the author’s firm.
The book is very readable, except for periodic bursts of generalized pontifications peppered throughout, as in the following example: “We need to produce a secondary architecture within the high-rise’s overall architecture which would no longer be isolated objects ordering overall residual spaces within, but become part of an aggregate ensemble forming urban realms within the skyscraper’s built form” (p. 120). The idea presented is suggestive.
The book raised a number of critical and sometimes intriguing questions about the design of skyscrapers as urban design, rather than simply as architecture. For example, how do we create successful places on the upper parts of a building as we have done on the ground? How would landscaping appear in the case of the tall building? Can we create pleasurable boulevards in the sky? Is the tall building the best or most appropriate form to accommodate land intensification? Furthermore, the book offers simple yet potent ideas for designing more engaging skyscrapers, including their de-compartmentalization via the means of transitional spatial volumes such as atriums, secondary spaces inserted between floors, and the stepped section used to break down the often numbing regularity of form (pp. 70–71). These ideas are illustrated by numerous illustrations, some referring to buildings designed by the author. They illustrate the concepts for creating green spaces complete with trees within the skyscraper, and for the incorporation of recreational facilities, and also of residential accommodation.

The strength of the book is in its images, and in particular, its highly evocative diagrams. Thus, in Chapter 4: Urban Design Framework and Vertical Land Use, diagrams of ‘The Manhattan Skyscraper’ and the ‘The London Skyscraper’ serve as intriguing points of departures and metaphors for the design of skyscrapers. Illustrations of these metaphors include a cyclic circulation system next to the building façade, providing a view of the surrounding landscape in ‘The Manhattan Skyscraper’, and large and small green spaces dispersed throughout the building to provide intermittent ‘breathing spaces’ in ‘The London Skyscraper’. A particularly powerful image is of one of the author’s projects, the MCA Tower renovation in Kuala Lumpur with a brief caption suggesting one of the many advantages of considering the skyscraper in terms of urban design rather than architecture: establishing a three-dimensional framework to be gradually occupied over time as needs arise and resources allow.

In the final analysis, the book constitute a new theory of urban design, as much as Yeang’s propositions and design concepts, including de-compartmentalizing the skyscraper’s built form, urban analysis as a three-dimension matrix, and a strategy to map various land uses within a skyscraper. The book briefly sketches ideas for the diversification of vertical land uses, the creation of public realms known as ‘places-in-the-sky’, vertical landscaping, creating high-rise residential neighborhoods, vertical townscapes, vertical transportation and accessibility, and the skyscraper as an urban ecosystem. However, the increased movement within the building requires supplementation of the vertical elevator transportation system with horizontal transportation, and movement along inclined ramps both inside and outside the building façade. It is not explained how this is to be accomplished, and it seems to require technology that is not presently available.