Conversations | Hybrid architectures: when art meets design

What can art learn from architecture and vice versa? Reflecting on the question is architect Kulapat Yantrasast, founder of WHY Architecture, whose recent projects include Dib Bangkok and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s renovated Rockefeller Wing; artist Cui Jie; and Design Trust co-founder Marisa Yiu.   

Cui Jie, artist 
Kulapat Yantrasast, Founder and Creative Director, WHY Architecture 

Moderated by Marisa Yiu, Cofounder, Lead Curator, and Executive Director, Design Trust 

Cui Jie creates paintings which explore the heterogeneous perspectives in various fields and geopolitical contexts by incorporating diverse layers. For the artist, the cities she depicts in her works are closely associated with her personal history: one can identify influences as vast as Bauhaus principles, ideologies of Chinese propaganda art, Soviet communist aesthetics, or the Japanese Metabolism architectural movement, among others. In rendering specific cities, architectures and landscapes, Cui explores the embedded histories of perspectives, and shrewdly proposes the political meanings of distance, angles and time. 

Kulapat Yantrasast, founder of WHY, is a visionary architect originally from Bangkok. Receiving a master’s and PhD. in architecture from the University of Tokyo, Yantrasast collaborated with Tadao Ando on influential cultural projects before founding WHY in 2004. Under his leadership, WHY designs innovative spaces that integrate art, culture, and community, with notable works including the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Rockefeller Wing and an upcoming Louvre transformation. A respected speaker and educator, Yantrasast received Thailand’s Silpathorn Award in 2009, and serves on numerous boards, including at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Noguchi Museum. 

Marisa Yiu is the cofounder and executive director, and lead curator of Design Trust, an initiative of the registered charity Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design that supports design and research projects in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area within an international context. An architect and founding partner of ESKYIU, Yiu continues to dedicate her career to advocating for the value of design in shaping cities, education, and cultural programming. 

The Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 Conversations program is curated by Stephanie Bailey.
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