A keen observer of urban culture, the Thailand-born, L.A.-based architect reflects on how his travels have shaped his work
Architect Kulapat Yantrasast at his home in Los Angeles. Photo: Courtesy Kulapat Yantrasast. Architect Kulapat Yantrasast at his home in Los Angeles. Photo: Courtesy Kulapat Yantrasast. As told to Ted Loos /
October 31, 2024
One of the most sought-after designers of museum and gallery spaces in the world, Kulapat Yantrasast and his firm, WHY Architects, have been busy reshaping the art world with their stylish, eclectic spaces. Having recently redesigned the Northwest Coast Hall at the American Museum of Natural History and executed an addition to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, they are now putting the finishing touches on the forthcoming reboot of the Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, due in 2025. Coming soon: a new private museum in Bangkok called Dib, and a revamped version of the King Fahad Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
WHY is known for brilliant adaptive reuse projects that overhaul existing spaces, converting a pair of retail buildings into a new L.A. campus for David Kordansky Gallery, for instance — an approach Yantrasast has called “acupuncture architecture.” WHY is also making inventive ground-up buildings as well, such as the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and putting a chic spin on high-end residential projects.
Yantrasast has lived all over the world and is constantly on the move, to places like Sri Lanka, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan, a peripatetic existence that has profoundly shaped the man and his work. “These places are my ‘chapters,’ ” he says. “My biography in geography.”
Bangkok’s Khlong Mon Canal. Photo: Shaun Higson/Alamy.I love water. That’s a big part of my life, having grown up in a tropical place like Bangkok. When I go back to Southeast Asia and get this deep, hot, humid feeling — that’s part of my skin.
When I think about Bangkok, I think about the canals. They are so important in my life. I learned to swim in a canal right in front of my house.
I use food as a metaphor: I prefer “mash-up” architecture. Thai food, to be candid, is not so original, as it was made from mixing Chinese food, Indian food, and indigenous ingredients. I think I have this Thai DNA: a skill set in improvisation and bringing things together, which is so needed in 21st-century culture.
Yantrasast at age six with his mom in Paris, and again 40 years later. Photo: Courtesy Kulapat Yantrasast. Paris has a special place in my heart as it’s the first foreign place I visited, when I was seven years old. My father was working, so I was walking around the city a lot with my mother. I didn’t even know what an architect was. But I was so drawn to it: Humans made this! It has such a cohesive and beautiful character. To be a flaneur in Paris is the best job in life; you just keep walking and walking.
A fun Paris day for me is walking all the Seine bridges nonstop, starting at Pont Mirabeau, past the Eiffel Tower, and then zigzagging down to the Pont de Bercy. I’d finish with a lap at Piscine Joséphine Baker, the urban aquatic oasis.
The residence that Yantrasast designed for himself in L.A. Photo: Courtesy Kulapat Yantrasast. Architects usually talk about cities, buildings, and forms. Since the beginning, I’ve been obsessed with the outside — I would rather be outside than inside.
The conventional image of a house, which is like a box, is a Western concept. We don’t have that in Asia. In traditional Japan, the buildings are so flimsy: They’re basically wood and paper with sliding walls so everything is almost like a temporary structure. You open the thing up and all of a sudden it’s an open-air pavilion.
I want to do a book called We Love Architects Who Love Gardens. Many of the architects I like or follow or who inspire me are the architects who love gardens — people like Luis Barragán, Tadao Andō, and Geoffrey Bawa. They capture nature within architecture and make architecture that’s distinct from but integral to nature.
I live in Venice, California, in a house I designed myself — it’s weirdly like a Thai house in concept. It’s up on a plinth, and you can open all the glass sliding doors, making the house and the pool become one space. I think my favorite part of the house is this ambiguous gray area between indoors and outdoors.
Because of that, I’m drawn to courtyards. Courtyards make you feel safe and anchored. They orient you, bring peace, and capture nature at the center.
The streets of Manhattan. Photo: Alexander Spatari/Getty.As I get older, I think more and more about density. How can you design places with very high density that also have privacy, a sense of community, ventilation, and good light? People want to live together, and we have to make sure they don’t kill each other.
Manhattan is one of the most exciting inventions. It’s just so sexy as a place. I think the density forces people to fight — there’s a strong sense of competition. With the grid system, everyone knows exactly where everyone is at all times. It’s like living in an Excel sheet. And Manhattan does not have alleys, so you don’t have a back door. All the trash goes out the front door. Everything out there in the open.
I’d feel remiss if I didn’t finish a good-size bird at Peking Duck House every time I come to New York.
A view of the medina in Fez, Morocco. Photo: Alexander Grabchilev/Stocksy.I’ve only been one time, but I am obsessed with Fez. Marrakech is understandable; Fez is not. That scale, that density, the narrow alleys, the people living and flowing together — it’s a fluid jigsaw puzzle in 3D. You feel that the whole city is its own organic labyrinth. It’s extremely spiritual and primal, as you listen to the chanting. It’s like a heartbeat, and the whole place beats together.
I think I have this Thai DNA: a skill set in improvisation and bringing things together, which is so needed in 21st-century culture
Muscle Beach in Venice, California. Photo: Wesley Lapointe/Getty.I see L.A. as a testing ground, all of these fabulous people together, humanity just oozing out. Because everything is so low-slung, one or two stories, you see so much of the sky, and it’s always sunny. As a city, it has a Wild West mentality even now. Venice Beach is definitely my haunt, and I treasure that free spirit, from the surf culture to Muscle Beach to Light and Space artists.
I hardly leave my house when I am in L.A., so don’t ask me about new hot restaurants. But I love a sunset stroll by the Venice boardwalk, my front-yard Coney Island where you find the most interesting souls.
The main draw for me is that it doesn’t have mosquitoes, which is unthinkable coming from Southeast Asia. Where are the insects? You can leave your house open all day.
I recently bought a new house in L.A., a mid-century home from 1955 designed by Buff & Hensman in Baldwin Hills, a traditionally African American neighborhood. You have this incredible view to downtown from a beautiful glass room cantilevered over the canyon.
On one level I don’t know why I did it — I’ve been trying to leave L.A. for 20 years and somehow I bought another house! 
Ted Loos has been covering arts and culture for more than 30 years. A longtime and frequent contributor to the New York Times, Loos also writes for WSJ. Magazine and is a contributing editor at Galerie magazine. He is based in New York City and the Hudson Valley.
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