La Brea Research Campus

LA BREA RESEARCH CAMPUS harnesses the La Brea Tar Pits’ rich history through the study and display of ancient fossils which emerged from the tar pits, bubbling below the park’s surface. As much as LA is known for its stunning views, skyline, and sunsets, it’s also a city where oil and the automobile have threatened the diverse ecological populations present, not unlike the tar pits thousands of years ago.

Our proposal re-invigorates one of the few large urban green spaces in the area and connects a series of cultural icons through a gridded organizational framework to create a cohesive cultural district.

University of pennsylvania school of design 2020

critics: marion weiss + michael manfredi

collaboration with Catherine Shih + perry ashenfelter

Investigating precedents of cultural and institutional campuses and buildings allowed us to better understand the scalar framework in which we were working in. The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Carpenter Center at Harvard, and the Stuttgart Museum of Art are some of the architectural precedents which we interrogated and dissected. Through a rigorous process of plan, section and axonometric drawing and modeling, we extracted the main concepts and ethos- the DNA- from these successful works of cultural architecture.

Taking inspiration from our architectural precedent research, we found translational opportunities in the relentless grid, proportion, and sectional inversion of Beinecke library, and the expansively open, and hovering Perez Art Museum. Extracted DNA concepts were tested through hybrid experimentation, leading to new notions of a sunken core, distributed volumes and suspended cages. The hybrids and grid strategy became a framework for understanding and translating formal and programmatic organization to our site.

Through our understanding of La Brea’s rich history, our mission was to create a community-oriented campus, which makes visible the interconnected matrices and wider relevance of the tar pits through scientific engagement, research, play and discovery. The new campus creates an infrastructural framework for temporal, immersive pavilions that increase the visibility of the work as more excavations are uncovered in time. The proposal creates an immersive environment, one that allows the work to be brought to the surface and invites the public to see the tar from different perspectives and scales.

Our building strategy, is based on the existing Page Museum, where science and discovery is very much hidden below ground and turned this on its head, creating an experience that rather elevates what is excavated and brought to the surface.

Choosing to maintain the existing museum, we created an inverse dialogue, merging these concepts together and giving the building a scaffold suspended identity, similar to the way in which bones are found trapped within an earthen matrix. We envision a campus in which through exposing the organizational frameworks that accommodate scientific research, we create an immersive environment that increases the visibility of the work and invites the public to see the tar from different perspectives.

Experientially, we built upon found materials and textures which distinguish La Brea from other museums - tar covered wood retaining walls, stained bones, oiled water, and methane bubbles. Positioned towards Wilshire Boulevard, a sunken axis leads visitors into one of the entry points. The steel cage pierces into the depths of the lake pit, elevating the methodical array of excavated dire wolf skulls encased in the museum’s facade.

The multitude of programs dispersed across the campus ensure the museum’s relationship to the site and soil is embedded within the experience for all. Juxtaposed with wolds above, that which is excavated is given too to breathe in matrix clean up pavilions where by dawn excavators begin their day on site. During the day spectators line the elevated viewing paths and are brought down to the depths of discovery, with seating for demonstrations at level with the excavated earth, fossils, and researchers. By night, a lone scientist finished cleaning up the day’s work.

The research campus is tied together by the boardwalk paths and landscape, allowing passerby to peer in on active excavation sited, making them part of the larger historical process. These paths lead the meandering passerby to the new museum , which rises from its sunken core to display a prominent cage, seemingly floating.

The museum’s core rises from a gridded network structure from within a sunken pit- inundated by dangerous water- elevating layers of research labs, and embedding a theatre within the visible archive. The new museum merges from the deep underground, much like a bubble that forms above the tar. As visitors make their way to the entrance, the path stops, allowing them to experience the sunken nature of the excavation.

Moving through the interior, which reflects the organization matter suspending the found fossils visitors are invited to witness the research process from the labs to exhibition to archive, increasing accessibility and providing a sense of discovery.

The Page Museum and the new wing participate in a dialogue of order, connectivity and organizational tension. The Page biomes a research and educational wing sharing a lab and archive seeping underground towards the new museum.