Kulapat Yantrasast is the Bangkok-born architect behind WHY, the Los Angeles studio that redesigned the Met's Rockefeller Wing. The Kulapat Yantrasast houses Los Angeles can document sit in Venice: his own concrete house of 2012 and the Amoroso Residence at 826 Amoroso Place. A Santa Monica house at 2460 Beverley Avenue is attributed to him.
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The museum architect who trained under Tadao Ando, and the few houses he has built a short walk from the Pacific.
Who is Kulapat Yantrasast?
Most of what Kulapat Yantrasast designs is built for art. Museums in Grand Rapids, Louisville and Fort Worth, galleries for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a new department at the Louvre. The houses are the rare part of the record, and the few in Los Angeles are within walking distance of the ocean.
This page is the record of those houses: where they are, what the architect's own studio says about them, and what the record does not settle. It sits alongside the other architect hubs in Debbie Pisaro's guide to the architects of Los Angeles. Debbie Pisaro is an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles buyers and sellers call when a house carries a name, and a name this rare in the residential record is worth getting exactly right.
Yantrasast was born in Bangkok, graduated from Chulalongkorn University, and earned his master's degree and doctorate in architecture at the University of Tokyo. From 1996 to 2003 he worked as an associate of Tadao Ando, on projects including the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 2003 he co-founded WHY with Yo-ichiro Hakomori and set up in Los Angeles.
From Tadao Ando's office to Venice
WHY's first major commission was the completion of the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan in 2007, the first art museum building in the world to earn LEED Gold certification. The museum work grew from there: the expansion of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, gallery planning for the Harvard Art Museums and the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Asian Art Museum expansion in San Francisco.
Two commissions put his name in front of people who never read an architecture magazine. The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about 40,000 square feet of galleries for the arts of Africa, the ancient Americas and Oceania, reopened under his design on May 31, 2025, as Wallpaper reported at the reopening. And in September 2024 the Louvre announced that WHY, working with the Paris firm BGC Studio, would design its new department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian art and renovate the Roman antiquities galleries.
None of that is residential, and that is the point. An architect whose working life is spent on light, sequence and how a person moves past an object brings the same attention to a house, and he has done it only a handful of times. WHY's own project index lists homes in Venice, Malibu, Phuket and Chiang Mai, and the Malibu Beach Residence is a collaboration with Ando himself.
Which Kulapat Yantrasast houses are in Los Angeles?
The firm documents three in Venice and one in Malibu. A fourth Westside house, in Santa Monica, carries his name in its marketing but does not appear on the firm's list. Here is each one, in the order the record supports them.
The Venice Beach House, 2012
The house the firm calls a test site for its approach to life and design is a three-story concrete house of about 4,000 square feet, completed in 2012 and widely published as Yantrasast's own home. The main level sits on a plinth one story above the street and opens along its length to a pool. Upstairs are sleeping rooms, a library and a studio, and the roof terrace looks down Venice Boulevard toward the sea. The firm's project page quotes him on the material: you cannot hide anything with concrete.
The Amoroso Residence, 826 Amoroso Place
The second Venice house sits on a walk street west of Lincoln Boulevard. WHY's page for the Amoroso Residence describes a 3,030-square-foot house completed in 2015 and designed around one question: how would you design a park to live in? Sliding glass opens the ground floor to the garden on a minimal steel and concrete frame, and the upper rooms are separate wooden volumes, each with its own skylight, scaled like the small bungalows of old Venice.
The house traded in 2020 at 826 Amoroso Place, Venice, CA 90291, with listing remarks crediting it as designed and built by Kulapat Yantrasast. The Los Angeles Times covered the house in 2017 as a family compound built after its owners visited Yantrasast's own concrete house in Venice. County records give 1,980 square feet on a 3,330-square-foot lot, the listing gave 2,368, and the firm gives 3,030, a spread that likely reflects what each source counts, including a permitted studio.
Venice is one of the densest small fields of experimental houses in California. The walk streets that run off Lincoln and Abbot Kinney hold Frank Gehry's Norton House on the boardwalk, Morphosis on Amoroso Place itself, and a run of artist studios. Yantrasast's two houses belong to that line, and they are later and quieter than most of it.
The Malibu Beach Residence and the Grand Home
The firm lists a Malibu Beach Residence designed with Tadao Ando, and a larger Venice project it calls the Grand Home, about 5,150 square feet, begun in 2019. Neither has a published street address, and this page does not guess at one.
The Santa Monica house at 2460 Beverley Avenue
2460 Beverley Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90405, sits in Ocean Park on the block between Hollister Avenue and Ocean Park Boulevard. The marketing material that has followed it credits the design to Yantrasast and describes a two-story, open-plan house wrapped in cedar fins, a hydraulic industrial bi-fold window that opens the whole west side to the ocean air, a suspended see-through staircase, and a roof deck with ocean views.
Two things in the record need saying plainly. County records date the house to 1923, so this is a reworking of a much older house, not new construction, and how much of the 1923 house survives is a question for the permit file. And the house does not appear on WHY's own project index, which is where every other house on this page is documented. Until the firm or the permit record confirms it, this page lists 2460 Beverley Avenue as attributed to Yantrasast, not as a documented work.
That is the same kind of house as Gehry's own house in Santa Monica, which started as a 1920s bungalow before he wrapped it in chain link and corrugated metal. In Santa Monica the architect's work and the original house often share one address, and both deserve to be on the record.
On an attributed house, ask for the architect's drawings and the permit history before you pay for the name. A firm's own project list is the cleanest proof there is.
What the record does not hold
“Amoroso Place in Venice is the perfect walk street,” says Debbie Pisaro.
Two numbers have drifted in the marketing around these houses, and both are worth correcting. The Louvre commission is a new department and a gallery renovation; the Louvre's own announcement gives no 60,000-square-foot figure, and the 40,000-square-foot number that travels with his name belongs to the Met's Rockefeller Wing. And these are not the only private residences Yantrasast has designed: his own firm lists at least five, in Venice, Malibu and Thailand.
The record is thin in a useful way. A museum architect with five or six houses to his name is a very small field, and every house in it is a known quantity to the collectors who follow him. That is a different market from the one Debbie Pisaro sees for a Schindler, where the R.M. Schindler catalogue runs to hundreds of buildings, or for Frank Gehry, whose early Westside houses are documented to the street number.
What it means to own a museum architect's house
The closer comparison is a contemporary Westside architect like Steven Ehrlich, whose Schulman House in Brentwood shows how a living architect's houses are valued, or Stephen Kanner, whose career is traced on Coastline 840's page on Kanner and California modernism. In each case the name is real value, and it is only as good as the paper behind it.
Pricing a house like these is the hard part, because there are almost no true comparables. Coastline 840's guide to pricing a one-of-a-kind architectural home walks through how that is done when the neighborhood sales say one thing and the architecture says another. Typical list-to-close on an architectural home runs 70 to 95 days, and the buyers for a house like this follow the architect, wherever they live.
For an owner, the work starts long before a listing: the drawings, the firm's documentation, the press, and a plain account of what was original and what was changed. Debbie Pisaro builds that record first, the way she does for architectural homes from the Westside to Ojai's architectural homes, so a house reaches its buyers already part of the story.
Debbie Pisaro is not the listing agent for 2460 Beverley Avenue or for 826 Amoroso Place. Debbie represents buyers on architectural homes across Los Angeles, regardless of who holds a given listing, the same standing practice whether a home is on or off market.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Kulapat Yantrasast?
Kulapat Yantrasast is a Bangkok-born architect and the co-founder of WHY, a Los Angeles design studio he started with Yo-ichiro Hakomori in 2003. He worked for Tadao Ando from 1996 to 2003, and his firm designed the Met's renovated Rockefeller Wing and a new Byzantine art department at the Louvre.
Which Kulapat Yantrasast houses are in Los Angeles?
His firm documents the Venice Beach House of 2012, a concrete house widely published as his own home, and the Amoroso Residence of 2015 on a Venice walk street. It also lists a Malibu house designed with Tadao Ando and a larger Venice project. A Santa Monica house at 2460 Beverley Avenue is attributed to him.
Where is the Amoroso Residence?
The Amoroso Residence is at 826 Amoroso Place, Venice, CA 90291, on a walk street west of Lincoln Boulevard. WHY completed the house in 2015 and describes it at 3,030 square feet. Its 2020 sale credited the design to Kulapat Yantrasast, and the Los Angeles Times covered it as a family compound in 2017.
Is 2460 Beverley Avenue in Santa Monica a Kulapat Yantrasast house?
Its marketing material credits the design to Kulapat Yantrasast, but the house does not appear on his firm's project index. County records date it to 1923, so the work is a reworking of an older Ocean Park house. Treat it as attributed until the drawings, the permit history or the firm confirm it.
Did Yantrasast work for Tadao Ando?
Yes. Yantrasast was an associate in Tadao Ando's office from 1996 to 2003, working on international projects including the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Clark Art Institute. The two later collaborated on a house in Malibu, which WHY lists as the Malibu Beach Residence, in collaboration with Tadao Ando.
What is WHY's Louvre project?
In September 2024 the Louvre selected WHY, working with the Paris firm BGC Studio, to design its new department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian art and to renovate the Roman antiquities galleries. The museum called it its most significant museographic overhaul in over a decade, and the new department is scheduled to open in 2027.
How do you price a house by a museum architect in Los Angeles?
Start from the house, not the neighborhood. With so few houses by an architect like Yantrasast, there are almost no direct comparables, so the price rests on documentation, condition, what is original, and how far the buyer pool reaches. Expect 70 to 95 days from list to close, and market to collectors well beyond Los Angeles.
Can Debbie Pisaro help me buy a house by Kulapat Yantrasast?
Yes. Debbie Pisaro represents buyers on architectural homes across Los Angeles, regardless of who holds a given listing, and many of the homes she sells never reach the open market. She can check an attribution, pull the permit history, and tell you what the architecture is worth before you write an offer.
Who is a good architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles?
Debbie Pisaro is an architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles who has sold architectural, historic and design-forward homes for 24 years. She founded Coastline 840, writes the record on more than two dozen Los Angeles architects, and represents buyers and sellers across the city and California, from Venice and Santa Monica to Ojai.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and an Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Los Angeles and the surrounding neighborhoods. Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market. For how she works with houses like these, see her page as an architectural homes specialist, or start at debbiepisaro.com.
If you own a house by Kulapat Yantrasast, or a house that may be one, the first job is the record, and Debbie Pisaro, an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles owners trust with named houses, can help you build it.
Coastline 840 · 160 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90026 · DRE #01369110
Debbie Pisaro, DRE #01369110, is the founder of Coastline 840, a boutique California practice, and an Inman Luxury Leader with 24 years of experience in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes. Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market. Coastline 840 is a DBA of Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153, responsible broker. Powered by Side: #1 California-based brokerage, No. 9 in the nation. She writes about California real estate at debbiepisaro.com, losfelizliving.com, and coastline840.com. Published November 2026.
WHY, project pages for the Venice Beach House and the Amoroso Residence, and the WHY project index. Musée du Louvre press office, September 2024. Wallpaper, on the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing reopening, 2025. The New York Times, on Kulapat Yantrasast, May 24, 2018. Los Angeles Times, on the Amoroso Place house, 2017. Los Angeles County Assessor records for 826 Amoroso Place and 2460 Beverley Avenue.
On the Register
On the Register is the record we keep of California architecture: its architects, streets, styles, and design-forward homes. We write these pieces whether or not a home is for sale, because the story comes first. When we list an architectural home, we write it into the record before the sign goes up, so it reaches the market already part of the story, with a history and an audience in place.
© 2026 Debbie Pisaro, Coastline 840 · ontheregister.com