Thai architect Kulapat Yantrasast’s Venice Beach home fuses art, nature and light
Why Architecture founder Kulapat Yantrasast has completed a three-storey house in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, that combines exposed concrete, polycarbonate and glass with an indoor-outdoor layout. The home, which includes guest rooms, a roof terrace and a pool, reflects the architect’s philosophy of
Thai architect Kulapat Yantrasast, founder of Why Architecture, has designed a three-storey home in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, that blends exposed concrete, polycarbonate and glass with extensive openings to the garden and pool. The house, which fronts the street behind a curtain of tall plants, contains two ground-floor guest rooms, a living and dining level that rises into the treetops, and a second floor with his bedroom, study and bathroom.
The bathroom features a sculptural steel washbasin counter set against a matte wall of Nero Marquina marble from Spain. On the roof terrace, a polycarbonate box capping the staircase lights up after sundown. “From the roof, you can see the surrounding area because the other buildings are quite low, so it’s quite nice,” Yantrasast said during a Zoom interview.
Yantrasast, who founded Why Architecture in 2004 with business partner Yo-Ichiro Hakomori, is known for museum projects including the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan and the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His latest major project, Dib Bangkok, opened in December 2025 in a repurposed warehouse and uses rough and polished materials such as exposed concrete, natural stone, wood, steel and polycarbonate.
The Venice Beach home is designed around Los Angeles’ outdoor lifestyle. “Living in Los Angeles, I feel it’s important to have that indoor-outdoor experience. We live in a climate that allows us to open up the house,” Yantrasast said. Large openings on the living level frame the swimming pool and garden, creating what he called “a very open, social space” with “a real sense of nature”.
During the pandemic, the house became “the perfect universe” for quarantine. “I was very happy to have my own house to quarantine in. It felt like a retreat. I felt very connected to the outside, while many others were frustrated because of the isolation,” he recalled.
Yantrasast studied architecture at the University of Tokyo and worked for Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando in Osaka. Fifteen years of apartment living in Tokyo deepened his desire for a home where nature was present at every turn. He collaborated with Ando on an oceanfront home in Malibu commissioned by art collector William Bell Jr, which took more than 15 years to complete and was sold to musicians Beyonce and Jay-Z in 2023 for US$200 million.
Yantrasast designed the house as “a vessel of light”, with skylights, windows and open spaces. “Sometimes on a Sunday, I sit near a window and look up, seeing the light move from one side to the other. I feel so happy because I feel the measure of time – how light plays with a concrete wall, how light plays with the water,” he said.
