András Szántó. Imagining the Future Museum

Sites of Empathy

Kulapat Yantrasast

WHY Architecture, Los Angeles & New York City

A VISIT TO A MUSEUM SHOULD BE LIKE ENJOYING A GARDEN OF IDEAS AND STORIES

In the summer of 2022, I met up with Kulapat Yantrasast, founder of the Los Angeles-based architecture firm WHY, for steamed dumplings on a balcony overlooking the circular courtyard of Art Basel, in Switzerland. Wearing his trademark bright-colored jumpsuit, the architect greeted passing acquaintances every few seconds, it seemed. Cheerful and energetic, Yantrasast, who is in his early fifties, is a ubiquitous presence on the global art scene. His biography predisposes him to be the epitome of the twenty-first-century culturally multilingual, peripatetic architect: a youth spent in Thailand; early career in Japan, working alongside Tadao Ando, minimalist master of concrete and light; eventually founding his own studio in California, the seat of today's and tomorrow's cultural industries. Yantrasast's practice extends beyond architecture to landscape design, furniture making, cuisine, and other creative pursuits. Uniting his museum projects is a belief in human-centered buildings that are open and accessible to all.

ANDRÁS SZÁNTÓ I recently had the pleasure of walking through your extension for the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, as well as your galleries in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, in Los Angeles. What guides your thinking about museums?

KULAPAT YANTRASAST Museums, with their Western origins, are sites of presentation and exclusivity. They were driven by class identities and exhibiting rare possessions. Museums consequentially symbolized a singular culture with a capital C. Architecturally, then, most historic museums were built as temples-for cults more than cultures. But this obsolete notion of the museum as a temple is on its way out. What we need now is a new and inclusive cultural platform.

Working in various places in America, I was shocked and angry to learn that many people were historically barred from going inside museums. The path toward becoming a relevant place for cultures in the twenty-first century demands a full acknowledgment of the lessons of the past and a radical inclusivity that is open to all people. This must be achieved in both the hardware and the software of the museum, architecturally and programmatically.

We definitely seem to be in a critical moment in the history of the museum.

The awakening of the museum from the software perspective has been clear. The decolonizing of the museum, equality, and inclusivity are among the most critical issues of our times. Yet when it comes to museum architecture and design, these subjects are still not being addressed head-on. If museum architecture doesn't evolve, the museum as a social institution will become irrelevant. It will not fit the new programs that societies need in order for us to grow and thrive as a whole.

You once described your practice as architecture that makes people like each other. Where does that aspiration come from?

I was born in Bangkok, Thailand. My parents are Chinese and Thai; I am a cultural mutt. Bangkok has a radical, inclusive social fluidity. Everyone looks out for one another in an intrinsic connectivity, almost like an ecology of plants. I then went to study in Japan and lived there for fifteen years, eight of them spent working closely with Tadao Ando, my mentor. But despite my deep love of refined Japanese cultures, I came to feel that as we keep abstracting architecture, we miss some essences of real living, of that diverse mash-up or spontaneous improvisation-a vibrant sense of being human. I felt the need to combine my Thai and Japanese roots, and figured America would be a good ground for exploration. Here, I hope to develop a clear yet complex architectural language while incorporating other voices, disparate interests, and even conflicting agendas into one shared architecture.

In which of your museums do you feel you have accomplished that goal?

The Grand Rapids Art Museum, built in 2007 in Michigan, the first art museum in the world to receive LEED Gold certification for environmental sustainability, is a good case study. Its goal is to balance an inspiring art experience with full commitments to its communities and environments. It serves as a sanctuary of cultures, and a welcoming portico and living room of the city. For the design of the American Museum of Natural History's Northwest Coast Hall, I personally spent a few months living, and years conversing, with the nations and communities along the coast. We include countless voices from the people whose artworks are highlighted. Yes, the museum presents art objects, but it is fundamentally about the people, their human stories, their creative lives behind the objects.

This, in a nutshell, is where the museum is headed-a place of social encounters as much as a storehouse for treasures. How might you achieve that at The Met, where you are currently transforming a suite of galleries?

Our team is responsible for redesigning The Met's Rockefeller Wing, which houses the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The goal is to provide an uplifting destination for art and also a special place for people. Previously, artworks from three-quarters of the world got squished up into one wing, and these regions have so little in common. Critically, the design needs to bring recognition to the different cultures and clarity to the creative roots and contemporary societies. The gallery is designed for people to feel at ease, ready for their own discoveries. There are places to sit, contemplate, and even relax with Central Park. The planning takes advantage of sightlines and natural light-you might be a hundred feet from the window, but you'll still have glimpses of the light and the park outside.

I want to dig into design solutions that help to realize this idea of empathy. You mentioned the portico, the idea of in-between spaces, fuzzy perimeters. What else is there?

Many people perceive museum design merely as form-making, that an art museum should look like a sculpture. I don't think architecture should try to mimic sculpture. The potentials of architecture lie in the spaces, experiences, and meaningful interactions it can host and empower for people engaging with multiple art forms.

When visiting museums, I often ask myself, "When and why do I feel connected and inspired?" In The Image of the City, a book published in 1960, Kevin Lynch, a godfather of urban planning, talks about what makes a city memorable. It's about clarity of circulation and districts, recognition of landmarks and nodes. Museum design might offer a similar image for visitors' experiences. Architecturally, the building should have high artistic qualities and civic presence. Experientially, it should provide spaces that encourage people to wander and make their own journeys. A visit to the museum should be like enjoying a garden of ideas and stories; there is no right or wrong way to visit a garden. You should build your own narrative and explore what your experience might be.

The possibilities for people to find new stories and ideas are essential. People should own their experiences, rather than being told what to see or do. Having places for people to sit down, ponder, or daydream is key. Many new museums are planned mainly to cope with the large mass of visitors, so the circulation becomes like a conveying system. Visitors move from one painting to another, in a row, back to back. There is no place to slow down and look closely. It is crucial to provide "pocket spaces" in between artworks, so people can think about what they are experiencing and be in the moment.

I like the term "pocket spaces"-these oases of sociability. But you can also go the other way, injecting exhibition elements into what were formerly considered non-art spaces. These two zones of the museum are often kept separate.

Museums' rigid separation between gallery and non-gallery spaces is being reconsidered, just as the sacred and the profane are being reconfigured in temples and plazas. The solution is not to mix everything up completely, but rather to insert things in between. And at the right moments, it's also adding pocket spaces of sitting areas for discussion between groups of gallery spaces, or presenting art moments in between public or educational spaces. Museums do have these components in their programs, but the strategic planning and distribution of mixed integration have not been creatively explored.

Which institutions have succeeded in creating this sense of welcome and interwovenness, in your eyes?

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark is a great example for integrating nature, activities, and contemplative art experiences; it is lively and uplifting. The Menil Collection, in Houston, shows us a way in which museums could fuse into the community, weaving everyday life with inspiring moments that art provides. The WHY-designed Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is a good study of a full mash-up where galleries, museum offices, art classrooms, visitors' lounges, and a library are interwoven in overlapping spaces, right in the heart of downtown.

To your point about humility, many feel that we are in a post-Guggenheim Bilbao...