Weiss/Manfredi Selected for La Brea Tar Pits

The firm of Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi bested fellow New Yorkers Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Copenhagen's Dorte Mandrup for the master planning, design and construction at the Tar Pits' 13-acre campus. Dr. Lori Bettison-Varga, President and Director of the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC), made the announcement yesterday, saying "It was a difficult decision." But in the end, "there was consensus in the feedback we received from the competition jury* and selection committee, NHMLAC staff and board, and the Los Angeles community that WEISS/MANFREDI’s conceptual approach captured the imaginations of a broad cross section of audiences."

Located in Hancock Park adjacent to LACMA, which is moving forward with its Peter Zumthor-designed building, the Tar Pits is an active paleontological research facility, its open-air excavations still yielding findings since research began there in 1913. A trio of fiberglass mammoths, one appearing to fall into a tar pit, is the symbol of NHMLAC's La Brea Tar Pits, which also consists of the Page Museum, designed by Willis Fagan and Frank Thornton in the mid-1970s. How the schemes addressed the mammoths and the museum appears to have dictated the selection outcome. DS+R would have moved the mammoths into a gallery, which was unpopular with the public, but WEISS/MANFREDI retains the icons along a curving, intersecting circuit of walkways that echoes the footprint of Zumthor's LACMA, as seen in the site plan below.

WEISS/MANFREDI is working with a multidisciplinary team that will continue to grow as it involves a range of LA-based consultants. The team currently includes:

• Experiential designer Karin Fong of Imaginary Forces
• Horticulturalist Robert Perry of Perry and Associates Collaborative
• Paleobotanist Carole Gee
• Naturalist and artist Mark Dion
• Designer Michael Bierut of Pentagram
• Historic preservation advocate Brenda Levin of Levin & Associates

• Milton Curry, Dean of USC School of Architecture
• Christopher Hawthorne, Chief Design Officer, City of Los Angeles
• Kirk Johnson, Director of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
• Kristin Sakoda, Executive Director, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture
• Barbara Wilks, Founding Principal and Architect, W Architecture and Landscape Architecture, LLC