Los Angeles Times: How Kulapat Yantrasast became museums’ design man of the moment: A timeline

“The most eye-catching element of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures may be Renzo Piano’s Geffen Theater, nicknamed the “Death Star”. But as soon as visitors step inside the museum, they will experience interior galleries shaped by a man who has emerged as a go-to designer for cultural institutions: Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY in Culver City…

The firm’s projects include Watts Towers Housing, currently under construction, and the Culver City Hall Centennial Garden, but it is WHY’s cultural work that has vaulted it to prominence. A timeline:

2007: Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan establishes WHY’s commitment to green design.

2010: When the prominent L&M Arts Gallery of New York decides on a L.A. outpost, it calls on WHY to do what is does best: Explode the concept of the white cube.

2011: The firm reimagines the seven galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago to create a unified space for Greek, Roman and Byzantine art.

2014: The Studio Art Hall at Pomona College gives students an open area to create, setting their own boundaries and encouraging porousness between disciplines.

2016: For the Speed Art Museum in Louisville Ky., WHY applies what it calls “Acupuncture Architecture” to the 1927 Neoclassical structure in an effort to maintain its historic charm…”

– Jordan Riefe, Los Angeles Times