WHY Architecture

WHY Architecture Creating connections between people, culture, and place. Los Angeles | New York | Bangkok | Japan | Paris wHY began as wHY Architecture in 2004. wHY design?

Today, why design engages in projects involving buildings, objects, grounds, and ideas with a team of more than 30 architects, landscape architects, and creative thinkers in Los Angeles, New York and Louisville. This is a question we ask ourselves with every new project, with every design decision made. Our methodology provides prompt and inspiring answers to create delightful outcomes for cultural, educational, real estate, commercial and private clients worldwide. Finding new perspectives, challenging assumptions, discovering new efficiencies, understanding relationships, bringing people together, and giving them room to grow characterizes our work. Each project engages a broad range of consultants, from engineers and botanists, to curators and economists, to execute with the highest degree of innovation, quality and intelligence. In less than ten years, we have built the first new green art museum in the world; expanded with the international art market by designing outposts for prominent galleries; explored the intersection of climate, landscape and architecture via an arts education facility for one of the nation’s top colleges; conceptualized and constructed several private residences; and are currently envisioning a new master plan for an historic park where the 1893 World’s Fair took place. wHY is led by founding Principal Kulapat Yantrasast. In 2012, Yantrasast was recognized as one of the art world’s top influencers and was the first architect to receive the Silpathorn Award for Design from Thailand’s Ministry of Culture in 2009.

10 months to the 2027 Bukhara Biennial!Master Uzbek artisans and contemporary artists, in dialogue across the city’s anc...
10/21/2026

10 months to the 2027 Bukhara Biennial!

Master Uzbek artisans and contemporary artists, in dialogue across the city’s ancient mosques and caravanserais. The 2027 Bukhara Biennial, with artistic direction by Kulapat Yantrasast, opens September 3.

Uzbekistan Art&Culture Development Foundation

10/16/2026

We’re thrilled to share that WHY has been appointed to transform Hathill House at in West Sussex.

“Goodwood’s landscape changes with every season and becomes the great surrounding theatre, where the boundary between inside and outside disappears completely.” – Kulapat Yantrasast

A place to look closely, gather, learn and belong. More to come.

Video Credit: Goodwood Art Foundation CIC

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art of Narrative Art is officially open!Inside MAD sculptural building in Exposition Park,...
10/12/2026

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art of Narrative Art is officially open!

Inside MAD sculptural building in Exposition Park, WHY designed roughly 100,000 square feet of galleries. In a building with almost no straight lines, the galleries give the work room to breathe. Each space is shaped around the stories it holds, with curved paneling that echoes the architecture. In the Cinema exhibition, “Star Wars in Motion,” brings out the energy and movement of film.

From cave paintings to Banksy, the story of how we tell stories is now open. Stay tuned to hear from the team that designed it!

Photos by Sebastian Mayer

Last week, Molteni&C hosted an evening at its Los Angeles Flagship Store with Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY and Séverine Tat...
10/09/2026

Last week, Molteni&C hosted an evening at its Los Angeles Flagship Store with Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY and Séverine Tatangelo of Studio PCH, in conversation about how architecture can become a home for art. Two practices, one from museums and one from hospitality, on what happens when art leaves the gallery and moves into the places where we live, stay, and gather.

Thank you to Molteni&C for hosting a beautiful evening.

Photography by: Jester Jungco

Three museums, one experience.For the Harvard Art Museums, WHY reimagined the interior galleries to bring the Fogg, Busc...
10/03/2026

Three museums, one experience.

For the Harvard Art Museums, WHY reimagined the interior galleries to bring the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler together as one. The design takes away architectural distractions so visitors can engage directly with the art. It spans 43,000 square feet of galleries and more than 130 custom cases developed with Goppion, built so the collection of about 250,000 objects can keep rotating.

In collaboration with Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Payette.

2011 - 2014

Our Venice House was never meant to be just a house: It’s an ecosystem of living, working, and socializing, built as a t...
10/01/2026

Our Venice House was never meant to be just a house: It’s an ecosystem of living, working, and socializing, built as a test site for how we think about life and design. Shaped loosely like a cave carved by water, it opens fully to a pool, a library, an architecture studio, and a roof terrace facing the sea. As Kulapat puts it, “There are times when you want magic, you want the invisible hand. But you can’t hide anything with concrete.” The house was designed to age in full view, its scars and seams becoming part of the story.

CNA Luxury just spent time inside it, art, nature, and California light. Full story on our Linktree.

From the Louvre to Uzbekistan to Bangkok, our work has taken us around the world. Every project taught us the same lesso...
09/29/2026

From the Louvre to Uzbekistan to Bangkok, our work has taken us around the world. Every project taught us the same lesson: shared spaces create shared understanding.

On October 7, Laurent Bili, Ambassador of France to the United States, welcomes Kulapat Yantrasast to the Embassy of France in Washington, DC, for an evening on these stories.

Hosted by Ambassador Laurent Bili
La Maison Française | Wed, Oct 7 | 7 PM
Free and open to the public. Link in bio.

From the Louvre to Uzbekistan to Bangkok, our work has taken us around the world. Every project taught us the same lesson: shared spaces create shared understanding.

On October 7, Laurent Bili, Ambassador of France to the United States, welcomes Kulapat Yantrasast to the Embassy of France in Washington, DC, for an evening on these stories.

Hosted by Ambassador Laurent Bili
La Maison Française | Wed, Oct 7 | 7 PM
Free and open to the public. Link in bio.

The Louvre, Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art, the Galleries for Islamic Art, and Renovation of the Roman Antiquities Trail - Paris, France

Mastaba - Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Lumbini Museum - Lumbini, Nepal

The Metropolitan Museum of Art,Rockefeller Wing: Arts of Africa,Oceania and the America’s - New York City, NY, USA

Goodwood Art Foundation - Chichester, United Kingdom

DIB Bangkok - Bangkok, Thailand

ilmi Science Discovery & Innovation Center - Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Kontempo - Manila, Philippines

Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum - New Delhi, India

“When Apricots Blossom” Uzbekistan Pavilion Salone - Milan Design Week, Italy

09/23/2026
09/19/2026

The sound of a gallery taking shape. Behind the build of The Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, where WHY dissolved the line between public and operational space in LA’s Art District.

Completed in 2017

The Metal Museum Museum opened its new home in Overton Park on September 5.Since 1979, the museum has sat on a bluff abo...
09/16/2026

The Metal Museum Museum opened its new home in Overton Park on September 5.

Since 1979, the museum has sat on a bluff above the Mississippi. Its new home is Rust Hall, designed by Roy Harrover in 1959 for the Memphis Academy of Arts and home to the Memphis College of Art until the school closed in 2020.

We began by taking things away. A later addition came down, and the building could breathe again. Skylights that had been covered over the years were repaired and reopened. Interior glass walls came back. So did Harrover’s daylight. The front door is now step-free and open to the park.

Then we added the part that makes noise.

The new Windgate Metal Studios are three times the size of the old ones: a working foundry, blacksmith shop, and fabrication space, surrounded by windows so you can watch the fire and the work from outside. A museum about making now shows the making.

And the bluff is not closing. It becomes an artist residency in 2027, so the museum keeps both homes.

Outside, WILDING X WHY X WHY carries the museum into Overton Park. Fourteen new works line the Robyn & John Horn Sculpture Walk, free and open to everyone, year-round.

Congratulations to Carissa Hussong and the Metal Museum team.

Go see it, Memphis!

Design Architect: WHY
Architect of Record: LRK
Landscape Design: Wilding X WHY
Executive Landscape Architect: Ritchie Smith Associates

Address

9520 Jefferson Boulevard Ste C
Culver City, CA
90232

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+13108395106

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