Workshop: Designing Museums with Architect Kulapat Yantrasast

Designing museums is not just building design, it is about creating public spaces and opportunities for social engagement with the arts. So how do we think through the architecture of museums? 

Join renowned architect Kulapat Yantrasast for a workshop on the role and place of contemporary architecture in museum design. Yantrasast will guide participants through a holistic design approach that works with these important cultural centers; creating places that balance institutional histories with their future potential, and considers the surrounding environment and diverse audiences.

Yantrasast has acquired a reputation as one of the art world’s preeminent architects, and this workshop is an opportunity to learn from his experience and approach to designing genre-defying spaces which focus on the human impact of the arts.

Kulapat Yantrasast is the Founder, Managing Principal, and Creative Director of WHY Architecture. Born in Bangkok, he received a M. Arch. and Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Tokyo. Upon graduation, he worked for eight years as a close associate to the Pritzker Prize Winning Architect Tadao Ando, leading several important cultural projects in the United States and Europe, including The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Kulapat Yantrasast opened the WHY Architecture workshop in 2004 in Los Angeles, California. In 2007, Yantrasast led the design for the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the first LEED Gold certified museum in North America. The Grand Rapids Art Museum was WHY Architecture’s first ground-up museum project and catalyzed the next two-decades of work as a leader in the art and culture industry. In recent years, Yantrasast has acquired a reputation as one of the art world’s preeminent architects, designing genre-defying spaces with a focus on the human impact of the arts. 

His interdisciplinary approach to architecture and design is inspired by his passion for food, ecology, and human society and he views each project as a mix of ingredients that yields its own unique recipe. He is a frequent public speaker at leading institutions, and is the first architect to receive the Silpathorn Award from the Government of Thailand. Since 2005, he has served on the Artists’ Committee of the Americans for the Arts, the nation’s oldest organization for support of the arts in society. Yantrasast is currently a board member of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and the Noguchi Museum in New York. 

Recent major museum and cultural projects include The Department of Byzantine & Eastern Christian Art and The Roman Antiquities trail at the Louvre, The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dib Contemporary Art Center in Bangkok, ilmi Science Discovery & Innovation Center in Riyadh, The Northwest Coast Hall at the American Museum of Natural History, an expansion of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, The Academy Museum of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles, The Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard Art Museums, East Palo Alto Center for the Arts, and the Ross Pavilion and West Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland, and The Yoshimoto Pavilion for Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan.