Diller Scofidio+Renfro (DS+R), Weiss/Manfredi, and Dorte Mandrup have been tapped to reimagine the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. 

Under a new initiative, the selected firms will compete to "reimagine and renovate" the 12-acre portion of L.A.'s Hancock Park that is home to the La Brea Tar Pits and the George C. Page Museum. The museums and surrounding grounds are owned and managed by a public-private partnership that includes the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County and Los Angeles County. 

The teams will unveil their masterplan proposals for the campus in August 2019 for public review. It is expected that a winning proposal will be selected by the end of 2019.

The improvements, according to a press release announcing the team selection, will be undertaken to "advance NHMLAC’s scientific research and public engagement for the next half-century" and come as a controversial plan to demolish and replace the existing Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus by Atelier Zumthor barrels toward construction next door.

The La Brea Tar Pits operate as a functional paleontological site while the Page Museum provides much needed scientific support for these efforts in addition to also accommodating over 400,000 visitors per year. 

The Page Museum was designed in 1977 by architects Willis Fagan and Frank Thornton. According to the Los Angeles Conservancy, the partially-submerged, space frame-topped museum sits at "the center of an artificial mound that resembles the ruins of a Mayan temple, and visitors follow a ramp well below the ground surface to enter." The complex features an open-air roof topped by a fiberglass frieze depicting Pleistocene mammals. Visitors to the park can peer into a central, palm tree-filled courtyard located at the center of the building from the top of the exterior mound while museum patrons circle within the glass-walled interiors below.