Natalie Perri
La Brea Tar Pits
Critic: Karen Lewis | Partner: David Johnson
Natural History Museum
Los Angeles, LA
Fall 2019
La Brea was designed to establish a fluid relationship between park and museum, with a strong sense of transparency. This ambiguous relationship challenges the traditional typology of museums.
The diagrams shows the private and public circulation routes which correlate to the public and private blocks of program. The public axis is translated as the primary collection space and the private axis houses the back-of-house operations of La Brea. The public bar of program is exterior and encourages movement and weaving between the architecture and museum’s artifacts.
After networking the site, connecting the tar pits to the park’s main entry points, a continuous spine with respective cross axes established the general form of the museum. The heart of the building flowed across this spine and housed the collection space. Sheer walls and woven exhibition spaces prompted pedestrians to loop through everchanging pathways.
The private spaces face north-east and are raised above the south-west public spine. The back of house operations are able to continue unimpeded by pedestrian traffic. The laboratory space becomes the lifted physical inverse of the collection space, giving mass where the collection space removed it. It also gives the museum height, while the collection space gave depth. The heavy yet elegant mass of the laboratory space visually guides the public level below, establishing and marking the main entry points. The graceful bends in the form also shows the intertwining cross-axis points below.
The work produced in this partnership was equalized. Both Johnson and I worked on the conceptual aspect and digital model. I produced the physical models and diagrams. Johnson produced the renders and plan.
Overview of Model
