“What makes you happy?” » This is the first question that the architect Kulapat Yantrasast will ask you if you order a house from him. A way of creating a surprise, of suggesting to the client that anything is possible, that we are going to make him tailor-made – the house of his dreams. Born in Bangkok, Thailand, fifty-five years ago, trained in Japan, at the University of Tokyo then with the grand master Tadao Ando, arrived in Los Angeles to open his agency which he calls WHY, Kulapat Yantrasast does nothing like everyone else.
This “globalized nomad without roots”, as he defines himself, is a creature of a somewhat new kind which has found in Los Angeles the ideal soil to engender itself. Architect guru, brilliant communicator, international jet-setter, we spot him by his explosive style, a unique way of combining fitted black suits and hypertrophied red sneakers, of going from oversized djellaba to couture overalls, of masking a frontal gulf by a layer of silver make-up…
During the Frieze contemporary art fair in Los Angeles, for which he designs the reception pavilion every year – last February, it was held at the Santa Monica airport – he pulls out all the stops: platforms with 15 centimeter heels on the feet, a blue-white-red cape with wide stripes thrown over a satin orange jumpsuit and torn at the knee. This is how he appeared to us in his agency in Culver City, a town adjoining Los Angeles: a creature of Star Wars dressed in glamrock fashion.
In two decades, this son of an engineer and a teacher has become the darling of the art world in Los Angeles. Everyone knows Kulapat Yantrasast. Everyone calls him by his first name. In July, he appeared alongside Seth Rogen, Pharrell Williams, Marc Jacobs, Philip Glass, David Lynch, Rihanna, Lil Nas X, Kim Gordon and Julianne Moore in a special issue of the magazine wallpaper devoted to “Three Hundred Funniest Creative Minds in America”.
Museums are snapping it up
Kulapat Yantrasast is a big fan of Frank Gehry. He follows in his footsteps. If the old architect, 94 years old this year, is famous today for his museums with maddening architectures, if he has become a symbol of Los Angeles, it is because he tied very young, from university, strong relationships with artists of his generation, and that he accompanied them as they became famous. Their notoriety, in a way, nourished his own. Kulapat Yantrasast has also melted into the world of art – and into that of fashion, which is very much linked to it today. And this from his years at Tadao Ando, where he supervised the Pulitzer Foundation in Saint-Louis, Missouri (2001), the Teatro Armani in Milan (2001), the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, Texas ( 2002), as well as the never-realized project of François Pinault’s foundation on Seguin Island, in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine).
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