Wright Brothers Museum | Kitty Hawk, NC

Powered flight changed the way we see the world, and that altered perspective allowed humans to change the world. For the first time, we could see the landscape of the countryside from above. We saw the natural features of the world in a way we never did before. We now perceived boundaries we could meet or go beyond, and relationships we could change.

The Wright Brothers’ Museum planned for Kitty Hawk, North Carolina will house the largest collection of Wright Brothers’ artifacts in existence. Along with an exhibit hall, will be a STEM classroom, a theater, a flight simulator, and a working machine shop with authentic equipment used to fabricate faithful replicas of original flying machine components. Also included in the complex will be an observatory, equipped with a 700MM telescope.

Museum visitors will walk from the tree-shaded parking area through the entrance lobby and up to the second level observation gallery. On this path, visitors move alongside suspended Wright Brothers aircraft and past displays of drawings, tools, historic photographs and other artifacts of the times and events leading up to their historic achievement. From the upper-level gallery, the parking area and arrival plaza become a stand in for the quilt of the countryside, with a variety of paving patterns and landscape features now seen from above, rather than the eyelevel view experienced upon arrival.