Page 18 - Reside Magazine Briggs Freeman

The Soulful Minimalist

n the world of top-tier art museums, Kulapat Yantrasast is a name
on everyone’s lips. With his architecture firm, WHY, he designed
the renovation of the Rockefeller Wing at The Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York, which opened in May; has been lead architect
I for Thailand’s first contemporary art museum, Dib Bangkok, opening
in December; and was selected by the Louvre in Paris to design the new
Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art, set to open in 2027.
Such accolades build on a decades-long career. Thai-born Yantrasast
learned his craft with Pritzker prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando
in Tokyo before moving to the U.S. and establishing WHY in 2004. The firm—
now based between Los Angeles and New York—designs cultural and
residential buildings, as well as landscape projects, but has earned
a reputation for its museum work, becoming a favored architecture practice
among art circles. WHY designed the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan
and the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky, as well as spaces for the Art
Institute of Chicago, LA’s Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and the
American Museum of Natural History in New York.
“I always say that I’m the matchmaker between art and people,” explains
Yantrasast. He loves museums as places of “empathy and understanding,”
where people can learn about global culture, and he wants visitors to his projects
to feel “uplifted.” Whether for the Met or the Louvre, he designs spaces that
aim to be appropriate for the art and artifacts within, but also instilled with
a sense of place—and comfort. “Most people feel intimidated by museums,”
he says, “but I want people to feel confident to explore.”
While working with storied New York and Paris institutions means
innovating within set parameters, Yantrasast has enjoyed more free rein with
Dib Bangkok. An initiative of the late Thai businessman Petch Osathanugrah,
and featuring his vast collection, the museum aims to put contemporary art
from Thailand and Southeast Asia “on the same level” as international art, says
Yantrasast—a vision shared by both the patron and designer.
The site is a 1980s warehouse in downtown Bangkok, reimagined by
WHY as a space for art. Minimal, open and flexible, the cavernous structure
balances precision and passion. “With new museums, I think it’s so important
to have a sense of soul,” says Yantrasast. Nevertheless, he didn’t want
the building to overpower its contents. “Artists don’t want to display their
art within architecture that pretends to be sculpture,” he says. Yantrasast
sees architecture’s greatest power in its ability to “host”—in that way,
the monumental yet restrained building leaves space for all the activities
and works that will fill it.
Flexibility and flow were priorities. “I love the feeling of togetherness
and openness,” says Yantrasast. “I want people to be able to see each other.”
This is an idea he returns to frequently: the architect—and architecture—as
connector. Having lived and worked in Thailand, Japan and the U.S., Yantrasast
found the notion evinces his own interconnected inspirations. “I see myself as Previous page: A residence in Chiang Mai,
the mixture between Japanese and Thai culture,” he says. “On one side, it’s Thailand, designed by Kulapat Yantrasast
and his architectural firm WHY
extremely minimal, and on the Thai side, it’s very eclectic. I love both.”
This blended approach comes alive most powerfully in his residential Above: The first question Yantrasast
asks his potential clients is, “What
projects, where he marries diverse inf luences with design that responds makes you happy?”

16