{"id":384015,"date":"2026-01-22T11:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T11:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/384015\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T11:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T11:04:11","slug":"for-architect-kulapat-yantrasast-the-point-of-a-building-is-the-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/384015\/","title":{"rendered":"For architect Kulapat Yantrasast, the point of a building is the experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m a next chapter kind of person,\u201d says Kulapat Yantrasast, when we meet in Bangkok. The Thai architect is here for the opening of his first significant project in his home country \u2014 a reworking of a 1980s warehouse into a private museum of contemporary art called Dib Bangkok \u2014 and he is dressed in a black corduroy jumpsuit and a furry-topped baseball cap. On his breast is a sparkling diamant\u00e9 brooch spelling out the word \u201cKulaparty\u201d; on his feet are Crocs decorated with silver studs.<\/p>\n

Architects have often self-branded \u2014 Le Corbusier\u2019s heavy-rimmed glasses, Richard Rogers\u2019 bright green collarless shirts \u2014 but few as exuberantly as Yantrasast, who says he hasn\u2019t \u201cseen a suit jacket for 20 years\u201d. If his is a look that demands you meet him on his own terms, then many are happy to do so. <\/p>\n

At 58, Yantrasast is reaching peak visibility, with an array of projects that makes his next chapter look like a busy one. Among them is the new Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art department and Roman antiquities trail at the Louvre \u2014 60,000 sq ft of museological real estate that represents the French institution\u2019s biggest overhaul since 2012. A new Contemporary Art Center in Makati City, Metro Manila \u2014 its 70,000 sq ft contained in a delicate flowerlike wooden construction \u2014 will be completed in 2027. There is also the ILMI Science Discovery and Innovation Center in Riyadh, its glittering glass globe likely to become a symbol of Saudi Arabia\u2019s conspicuous progression and increasingly glitzy skylines.<\/p>\n

The day before our Bangkok meeting he had also made a quick stop in Delhi, where he recently landed the job of designing the new Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum (which will replace the National Museum of India). In a dramatic reuse of the North and South Blocks of Lutyens\u2019 and Baker\u2019s 1930s Secretariat Buildings \u2014 once the architectural definition of British rule \u2014 it will contain 950 new galleries across more than 1mn sq ft. \u201cI understand the context of Asia,\u201d says Yantrasast, who won the commission after a competition that featured four other practices, including Zaha Hadid Associates and IM Pei.<\/p>\n

\"FourSpeed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, whose expansion was designed by Yantrasast \"ModernGrand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan, another Why project <\/p>\n

Since setting up his company, Why Architecture, in 2004, he has completed several major cultural projects in the US \u2014 often reworkings of or additions to existing buildings. Yantrasast defines his approach as \u201cacupuncture architecture\u201d. \u201cOur work is very intervention-based,\u201d he says. \u201cI like to think that what we do decides the life, rather than the form. If you are going to do a building, an interior, the point, first and foremost, is the lived experience that it provides. One thing I learnt from doing museums in America is the importance of the visitor experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why Architecture is split between New York and Los Angeles, and the team is a mixture of architects, landscape designers and researchers. \u201cWe work in a state of slight chaos,\u201d says Brian Butterfield, the lead architect on Dib Bangkok, \u201cbut it seems to yield the right results.\u201d In May, an incisive $70mn reworking<\/a> of the Rockefeller Wing of the Arts of Africa, the ancient Americas and Oceania at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was particularly well received.<\/p>\n

Why Architecture (with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects) reinstated the transparency of the original 1980s design of the Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo glazed extension, allowing views across Central Park, and treated 1,800 objects to a display that unravelled multiple and complex histories, rather than presenting continents as monolithic slabs. \u201cThe most privileged part of my job is getting to meet the scholars,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd these curators pour their hearts out to you, because they want you to help them tell their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GalleryThe reworked Rockefeller Wing at the Met, New York \u00a9 Bruce Schwarz<\/p>\n

Yantrasast grew up in Thailand, but went to Tokyo to study for his degree, master\u2019s and PhD. \u201cIn Thailand, contemporary architecture in the 1980s was either about putting a traditional roof on a modern-looking building, or following the glass-office block style that could have been in Houston. I wanted to discover a better language for the people, the climate, the context, and I realised I mustn\u2019t turn to the west for that. So I went to Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, in the mid-1990s in Bangkok, he met Tadao Ando, the celebrated king of concrete, whose minimalism and rigour imbue his buildings with an almost spiritual quality. \u201cThere was a bit of snobbery around him when I was in Tokyo, that he was more a stylist than an intellectual,\u201d says Yantrasast. \u201cBut it was love at first sight.\u201d They went on to work together for eight years.<\/p>\n

In 2004, Yantrasast peeled himself away from Ando \u2014 \u201cI travelled all over the world with and for him, and it was amazing, but it wasn\u2019t my party,\u201d he says \u2014 and found his way to Los Angeles. \u201cI was attracted by people like Frank Gehry<\/a> and the Eameses, and all the immigrants from Germany in the 1940s who had gone to LA.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AMarciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles <\/p>\n

There Yantrasast became the go-to architect for both concrete and glass houses, and art foundations such as the Marciano, a Masonic temple repurposed as an altar of contemporary art. \u201cThat is the nature of Los Angeles, a lot of private money,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d like to have done more public parks by now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bangkok project came to him in 2018. The man behind it, Petch Osathanugrah \u2014 a flamboyant Bangkok billionaire businessman, pop star and art collector \u2014 had been envisioning a museum for several decades. \u201cHe\u2019d been talking to everyone \u2014 SANAA, OMA, all the glamorous ones,\u201d says Yantrasast. \u201cI don\u2019t see myself as sexy, I\u2019m a problem-solver. But then we became friends.\u201d The family had acquired the warehouse and Yantrasast set about making it a place to exhibit their exceptional collection of western and Thai art from 1960 to now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe agreed that Bangkok has enough colour, that what it needed was something relatively serious and resolved, more austere, more Zen,\u201d says Yantrasast. \u201cThe building was an I-shape \u2014 just a long concrete structure \u2014 and we made it into a U-shape to create a courtyard. I\u2019m very much a courtyard person.\u201d He also added a cone-shaped structure clad in silvery mosaic tiles that hovers over a pool of dark water, and a sawtooth roof line.<\/p>\n

\"AChapel and skylights at Dib Bangkok \u00a9 Dib Bangkok\/W Workspace<\/p>\n

Inside, the spaces are long and lean, the fully glazed ground floor filled with light, the two upper floors with high ceilings. It is lightly finished with polished concrete floors and long picture windows. \u201cI don\u2019t like being in a building and not knowing where you are,\u201d says Yantrasast. <\/p>\n

The inaugural exhibition, overseen by the museum\u2019s Japanese director Miwako Tezuka, knits together the strands of the collection, beginning with an interactive piece by the Australian Marco Fusinato, which invites visitors to hit a reverberating wall with a baseball bat, but quickly moving to Arte Povera works by Jannis Kounellis. There is a stunning Anselm Kiefer \u2014 a huge room-sized work of towering bronze blooms \u2014 and sculptures by Montien Boonma, Thailand\u2019s pre-eminent artist who died in 2000 aged just 47.<\/p>\n

Osathanugrah died unexpectedly a few years ago, so the inauguration of Dib (pronounced \u201cdip\u201d and meaning raw or authentic) and the running of the myriad family businesses has fallen to his 32-year-old son Chang. \u201cWe want Dib to serve as a place to slow down, away from the hustle and bustle and chaos of urban living,\u201d says Chang. \u201cAnd Kulapat understood that, and that we want this to highlight Bangkok as a cultural beacon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"YantrasastYantrasast, right, and art photographer Andreas Gursky at the Dib site during construction <\/p>\n

As the opening party unfolded on the Saturday night, Chang \u2014 the heir to this empire and also to his father\u2019s combination of artistic and business ambition \u2014 took to the stage with his band and played a range of songs, from Talking Heads\u2019 \u201cPsycho Killer\u201d to Lou Reed\u2019s \u201cWalk on the Wild Side\u201d. Yantrasast, now in a bright orange Adidas issue jumpsuit and chunky beige Crocs, saw his courtyard come to life and smiled.<\/p>\n

why-site.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram<\/a>, Bluesky<\/a> and X<\/a>, and sign up<\/a> to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n