Dib Bangkok, Thailand’s first contemporary art museum, features a sawtooth roof and a cone-shaped gallery named “The Chapel.” Photograph: W Workspace. Courtesy of WHY Architecture

In 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; and was selected by the Louvre in Paris to design the new Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art, set to open in 2027. He is also lead architect for Thailand’s first contemporary art museum, Dib Bangkok, opening in December 2025.

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.

“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. Whether for The Met or the Louvre, he designs spaces appropriate for the art and artifacts within, but 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.”

The first question Yantrasast asks potential clients is, “What makes you happy?” Photograph: Manfredi Gioacchini. Courtesy of WHY Architecture

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.

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.” 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 and Japan, as well as the U.S., Yantrasast sees himself as a mixture between Japanese and Thai culture. “On one side, it’s extremely minimal, and on the Thai side, it’s very eclectic. I love both.”

This Phuket home in Thailand, built in 2021, combines concrete and glass in harmonized contradictions. Photograph: SPACESHIFT STUDIO. Courtesy of WHY Architecture

This blended approach comes alive most powerfully in his residential projects. “The first question I ask my potential clients is: ‘What makes you happy?’” Yantrasast says. “Designing someone’s house is, for me, like designing someone’s gown. It needs to reflect who they are. It has to be something they feel comfortable in.” Getting to know his clients is a vital part of crafting their ideal home. “When you design a house, you become a psychologist, because you have to,” he says.

The kitchen, says Yantrasast, can often be the biggest challenge. Though some people want a showroom-style space, he gently pushes back. “I always ask: ‘Do you really want to live in a kitchen showroom?’ It looks nice but it doesn’t have life. Your kitchen has to reflect how you and your family relate to each other.” This personal focus is different to the way Yantrasast’s firm designs gallery spaces, despite the fact that many of WHY’s residential clients are collectors. “No one wants to live in a museum,” he says. “Everyone wants to live in a place that belongs to them.”

In homes he has designed for collectors, Yantrasast carefully balances the needs of art with the owner’s lifestyle. “You don’t want to expose a priceless art collection to the salt air, but you also don’t want to live in a house where you cannot open a window,” he says. The art, he adds, shouldn’t “overwhelm the living.”

Yantrasast is a great collector himself, and learned how to navigate display and livability when designing his own home in Venice Beach, California. Having undertaken a long search for the perfect house, he realized he needed to build it himself. “I developed a lot more empathy for my clients, because I know how difficult it is,” he says. “If you want to design your own house, there’s at least 1,000 decisions you have to make.”

Yantrasast’s Venice Beach house, built in 2021, is inspired by the work of Japanese modernists, with elements of Thai playfulness. Photograph: Richard Powers. Courtesy of WHY Architecture

The resulting home is a modernist-inspired concrete structure: clean lines and open-plan living, with a flow of space between inside and out, and plenty of nooks for displaying objects. “I started to think about what makes me happy,” he says, “and that’s flexible space—a place for me to host and socialize. I wanted a pool, a garden, a dog; the whole American dream in my own little version.”

The house is concrete because Yantrasast “loves” the material—perhaps an inevitable preference, having worked with the master of concrete, Ando, for so long. “I like the raw honesty of it. Concrete tells you how it’s made. It’s like a pound cake: there’s no decoration, no whipped cream.”

Nevertheless, he doesn’t “worship at the church of concrete” either, noting that for the material to work in a home, the presence of light and nature is crucial. “Without that, it’s a bunker,” he says. He turned to the material for a house in Phuket, as well as a Malibu residence, in collaboration with Ando. Looking at these structures, it is easy to conclude that Yantrasast is a minimalist. Does he identify as one?

“I definitely understand and appreciate minimalism, but I see limitations in it,” he says. Instead, he would like to be known as “the soulful minimalist.” He returns to the Japanese and Thai styles that influence him—a mix of “sushi and Pad Thai,” he says, smiling—and reflects on how he moved from Japan to the U.S. to enjoy more “variety and diversity.”

Embracing his heritage, Yantrasast imagined this Chiang Mai residence as a leaf sheltering its inhabitant. Photograph: SPACESHIFT STUDIO. Courtesy of Why Architecture.

Certainly, this variety plays out in a house he designed in Chiang Mai, Thailand. While some exposed concrete structure is present, the house is characterized by a large sweeping roof, covered in clay tiles and referencing traditional Thai architecture. It is filled with teak floors and surfaces. “Growing up in Bangkok, wood is such a big part of what I like to do—there’s a sense of warmth to it,” he says.

Much like the curators of the great art institutions he designs for, Yantrasast carefully considers context, setting and experience. For him, life—not just priceless works—is the art that architecture serves to host.

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