Archinect - News

LA's La Brea Tar Pits project picks Kossmanndejong to lead exhibition design

2023-01-31T19:32:00-05:00

Amsterdam’s Kossmanndejong (KDJ) has been announced by the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County as the lead exhibition designer for the La Brea Tar Pits overhaul following a competitive international search process.

In tandem with WEISS/MANFREDI and Los Angeles-based Gruen Associates, the studio will be tasked with handling the schematic design for the project, which will “reimagine” the 13-acre campus located nearby LACMA and the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures inside Hancock Park over a seven- to ten-year construction timeline.

Image: Weiss/Manfredi, courtesy NHMLAC

“We have been building toward a reimagined La Brea Tar Pits for several years now, as we plan for a visitor experience equal to the promise of sharing discoveries from a research site unique in the world,” the Museums’ Director Dr. Lori Bettison-Varga said in a statement. “Our goal is to highlight the vital relevance of the Tar Pits to our own era of climate change, provide facilities that better support ...

LACMA makeover: Five active cranes signal midway point for $750 million Zumthor project

2022-07-13T12:20:00-04:00

A significant next step has been taken in the construction process that will eventually culminate in Peter Zumthor’s brand new David Geffen Galleries building for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as it inches closer to its anticipated 2024 completion date.

According to Urbanize Los Angeles, two new tower cranes are now in operation at the site, in addition to the three that were brought online back in October. The project is now approximately at its midway point after a delayed start in 2020.

Image courtesy LACMA

LACMA says it has recently completed concrete pours on the western portion of the mat foundation for the estimated $750–$900 million project, which replaces William Pereira’s 1965 “floating campus” trio of buildings (and their 1986 Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer-designed extension) in favor of the controversially smaller, new two-story building that bestrides Wilshire Boulevard next to the La Brea Tar Pits.

Previously on Archinect: In Los Angeles, institutions build, but...

La Brea Tar Pits overhaul: Los Angeles County begins environmental review ahead of Weiss/Manfredi's redesign

2022-02-18T19:01:00-05:00

An official start to the transformation of one of Los Angeles’ longest-standing tourist attractions is underway as Urbanize LA is reporting that county officials have now begun the Environmental Impact Report portion of the La Brea Tar Pits master plan effective February 1st.

The Weiss/Manfredi-led design scheme will reconfigure the layout of the 12-acre park and George C. Page Museum into a better spatially organized program called La Brea Loops and Lenses. The comprehensive overhaul coincides with the more-publicized new Academy Museum and LACMA expansion next door to create a totally reinvigorated Hancock Park area in increments along a seven- to ten-year timeline.

Previously on Archinect: Weiss/Manfredi to lead La Brea Tar Pits overhaul in Los Angeles

Weiss/Manfredi’s plan beat out DS+R and Dorte Mandrup for the commission thanks in large part to its emphasis on keeping the existing museum, which will be given an addition in order to expand the role of education for the 45-year-...

Weiss/Manfredi to lead La Brea Tar Pits overhaul in Los Angeles

2019-12-11T18:14:00-05:00

A design team led by interdisciplinary, New York City-based architecture and landscape firm Weiss/Manfredi has been selected to reinterpret the La Brea Tar Pits and George C. Page Museum building in Los Angeles.

The design team includes experiential designers Imaginary Forces, horticulturist and water conservation experts Perry and Associates Collaborative, paleobotanist Carole Gee, artist Mark Dion, and Michael Bierut of Pentagram. Locally, the team will draw on the expertise of Brenda Levin of Levin & Associates for architectural and historic preservation assistance, among others that have yet to be announced.

The Lake Pit at La Brea Tar Pits features a trio of fiberglass mammoths that will be preserved by the selected scheme. Courtesy of La Brea Tar Pits.

Upgrading and Expanding the Museum and Site

The project seeks to repurpose, upgrade, and expand the 1970s-era George C. Page Museum building, a partially submerged paleontological and educational complex designed by Los Angele...

Weiss/Manfredi, DS + R, and Dorte Mandrup unveil competing schemes for L.A.'s La Brea Tar Pits

2019-08-27T13:00:00-04:00

Weiss/Manfredi, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS + R), and Dorte Mandrup have unveiled a trio of competing schemes for Los Angeles's La Brea Tar Pits, George C. Page Museum, and Hancock Park.

The proposals are aimed at rejuvenating and updating the 12-acre park and its iconic tar pits installation, which includes a tar-filled lake populated with life-size fiberglass woolly mammoth figures. The three schemes differ in terms of their approach to retaining the existing Page Museum structure, an iconic and submerged Mayan temple-inspired facility designed in 1977 by architects Willis Fagan and Frank Thornton.

The proposals, expanded below, will be on view at the La Brea Tar Pits museum through September 15th. A jury that includes 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 D...

In Los Angeles, institutions build, but they can't plan

2019-07-12T18:34:00-04:00

“We have this museum district,” says architect and theorist Dana Cuff, who oversees cityLAB, an urban research and design center at UCLA, “but the stuff that holds everything together is the part we call the city, and that is the part that Los Angeles has never gotten right.”

Carolina Miranda of The Los Angeles Times reports that despite a number of new and forthcoming institutional expansions coming to the Miracle Mile museum district in Los Angeles, the area's urban design is sorely lacking.

The problem, according to Miranda, is worse by the fact that the designers and directors of the forthcoming building projects, which include Atelier Zumthor's Los Angeles County Museum of Art overhaul, have largely ignored a planned subway extension slated for the district.

Miranda writes, "all of the development raises concerns about how the architectural pieces—and, more important, the public spaces around them—will come together after the last nail has been banged into place."

Dana Cuff of UCLA's CityLAB tells Miranda, “There is no there there,” adding, “there is no urban design that has been created for this chunk of Wilshire that will be one of the most pedestrian and populated parts of the city.”

Selgascano and Second Home prepare for their colorful Los Angeles debut

2019-06-21T12:09:00-04:00

A sea of canary yellow office pods is taking shape on a dusty lot off of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. There, Spanish architects Selgascano and global co-working platform Second Home are busy finishing out the group’s new 90,000-square-foot Hollywood outpost, a mesmerizing construction site brimming with unusual architecture.

While touring the site, Second Home co-founder Rohan Silva explains the basic premise behind the budding social-business venture: “We want to put creative people together and help them do great work.”

Interior community arts spaces will be housed within a repurposed Paul Revere Williams-designed building. Image courtesy of Second Home.

That vision guides the architectural design of the complex as well as the company’s business plan. The site, arranged in two opposing configurations, mixes old and new, formal and ecstatic, staid and colorful. At the front of the complex, for example, an existing 1960s-era Paul Revere Williams-designed building that once hous...