Architecture firm selected to redesign La Brea Tar Pits

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum are getting a new look, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County announced Wednesday that an architecture firm has officially been chosen for the design team.

New York-based architectural firm Weiss/Manfredi will work with NHMLAC on a multi-year process of public engagement, master planning, design and construction at the 13-acre campus. The project will encompass the world's only active paleontological research site in a major urban area, the museum's asphalt seeps, surrounding parkland and the George C. Page Museum building.

The plan calls for preserving most of the park's current architecture while adding a new wing to the northwest portion of the property, where a parking lot currently sits.

According to the architectural firm, the idea is to create one continuous experience throughout the park and the NHMCLAC, enhance spaces for community and scientific research and "reveal the La Brea collection to visitors, bringing the museum to the park and the park into the public imagination.''

The mammoth would remain in its current location and be a featured attraction in the plan.

Weiss/Manfredi and two other finalists - Danish architecture studio Dorte Mandrup and New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro - pitched ideas to the museum in August. Public feedback was solicited on the three plans by NHMLAC, which received more than 2,100 survey responses from Angelenos.

City News Service contributed to this report.

Note: Some of the renderings in the video above are not from the firm Weiss/Manfredi.