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TAY KHENG SOON has been a professional architect since 1964. He was chairman of Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group (SPUR) in 1970, an independent group examining the urban environment, active in proposing innovative solutions to urban living. He was President of the Singapore Institute of Architects from 1991 – 1993. Tay is currently practising as sole proprietor of his own firm. His abiding concern is sustainable urbanisation and the evolution of a proper design process factoring in human dimensions within the Asian context. His scope of thinking and design compasses politics, education, economics, the environment, culture and modernisation. His enduring concern is in engendering modernity though integrating human motivation, planning and space design in a design language that is firmly based on the local reality of climate, vegetation and life. Tay is currently Adjunct Professor of Architecture at the National University of Singapore. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), a global community of intellectuals dedicated to considering, “the social consequences and policy implications of knowledge.” Tay is also a member of the World Ekistics Society, (WES) which focuses on the study of human settlements. His academic involvements include being a Visitor Scholar under the Aga Khan Program at MIT in 1986 and in 1989. He was also Research Fellow with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) which published his monograph, “Mega-cities in the Tropics”. This publication led to a government appointment to prepare a development guide plan for a fringe urban site in Singapore wherein he proposed “The Tropical City Concept”. The book, “Line, Edge and Shade”, by Robert Powell, on Tay’s writing and work, and that of Akitek Tenggara, was released in June 1997. He received the 2005, A+D and Spectrum Foundation of India, Golden Architect Award for excellence in Architecture for Singapore in 2006. Professor Tay Kheng Soon was presented the PLEA 2007 award in recognition for his pioneering efforts in promoting good design and sustainable architecture in Singapore at the 24th International Conference on Passive and Low Energy Architecture (PLEA 2007) Conference in Singapore that year. He presented the keynote paper at the ASEAN+6 Forum in Bangkok on climate change in June ’08.