La Brea Tar Pits Master Plan

The La Brea Tar Pits Master Plan is Weiss/Manfredi's reimagining of the 13-acre Ice Age fossil site in Hancock Park, the only active urban paleontological excavation in the world and one of Los Angeles's defining cultural landscapes. Working with the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, the design team reworks the George C. Page Museum, adding roughly 40,000 square feet to its existing footprint and threading a ramped gallery through the building so visitors move continuously between exhibition halls, the fossil labs and the tar seeps outside. The berms that have long walled the campus off from Wilshire Boulevard are cut back and reshaped to open sightlines, doubling the accessible outdoor area and creating a 28,000-square-foot civic lawn, an amphitheater, shaded gathering areas and a looping trail network that stay free to the public independent of museum admission. Later phases add entrance pavilions, expanded walkways and a dedicated research building, building the campus out over roughly seven years. The project sits directly alongside LACMA on Museum Row, and is backed by state bond financing.