ARCHITECTURAL RECORD
August 2008

With a museum under its belt and a full plate of work, the Los Angeles-based firm wHY doesn't have cause for doubt, but still keeps questioning. Also not in doubt about their work are two Chicago-based architecture graduates whose firm, Spirit of Space, translates architectural space into film.

wHY: It's a rhetorical question
Growing up in Thailand, Kulapat Yantrasast's (seated far right in photo left) first impression of American architecture wasn't very good. Bangkok's watered-
down, imported U.S. buildings and its cocky U.S.-schooled local architects made him think America was a land of yuppies and mediocre design.
But after working here for several years and starting the Culver City architecture firm wHY (workshop Hakomori Yantrasast) with Yo-ichiro Hakomori (seated third from right in photo above) in 2004, Yantrasast sees things much differently. He's discovered a great range of architecture in the U.S.— including plenty of excellent work to counteract the bad—and he sees America mostly as a land of openness and possibility (although he is still surprised by how slow the country has been to embrace Modern architecture). The U.S. has been good to both partners. Since founding their firm, they have built a major art museum in Michigan, and have secured an impressive mix of commissions in the U.S. and Asia.
Hakomori was born in Tokyo, grew up in Boston and Seattle, studied architecture at UCLA, and got a Ph.D. in engineering at the University of Tokyo. He then worked for Frank Israel, Koning Eizenberg, and Arthur Erickson, and taught architecture at USC. Yantrasast studied at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University and received his master's and Ph.D. degrees in architecture at the University of Tokyo, where he met Hakomori in 1991. He then went to work for Tadao Ando for seven years, on projects such as the Foundation Francois Pinault for Contemporary Art in Paris, the Calder Museum in Philadelphia, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas.
Yantrasast's directing role on the Fort Worth project helped the firm land its first major commission, for the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM). In 2004, that organization was about to part ways with its architect and was scrambling for a replace¬ment. Its director, who had visited the Fort Worth Modern, was inspired by its simple poetry, and decided to select wHY to design the new museum.
The 125,000-square-foot GRAM, which opened in October 2007, is a three-story structure composed of huge concrete slabs that form an E-shaped plan, allowing natural light to penetrate throughout, and reaching like "fingers" into Maya Lin's elliptical park on the site. The building's ther¬mal mass, louvered windows, and recycled materials all contributed to its becoming the first LEED Gold museum in the U.S. (not an easy task for a building type where temperature and light control are vital).
The firm's other work displays a similar tendency toward Minimalist design, exposed materials, architectural clarity, and unexpected innovation in plan, rather than in shape, the two point out. "To us, architecture is about experience more than form," says Yantrasast.
Both architects are heavily involved in design, yet Yantrasast develops more of the inspiration and Hakamori is more involved with the building side
of things. Neither have any interest in their firm being pegged as part of the LA architecture crowd, preferring to look at styles around the world and, more important, individual building sites, for inspiration. The success of this approach is evident when you enter the firm's 14-member office in Culver City, which is bursting at the seams from all the new work. Meanwhile, the two partners have no intention of becoming complacent. They named their firm wHY because they want to keep questioning and searching. And why not?