In 2007 Ahearn Schopfer & Associates was commissioned to design a new building to house the International UFO Museum & Research Center in Roswell. The museum purchased a large parcel of land at Eighth and Mains streets to build this new state-of-the-art facility.
The new building will replace the museum’s existing building, at 114 N. Main St.
The two-phase project will be a single-level museum capable of future expansion.
Design Brief/Exterior: The design concept is that of a found alien object of unknown origin, which has been placed in a research drawer awaiting examination.
The object, like the museum subject matter, cannot be contained and thus pushes out from its continent.
Object: While most agree that life certainly exists elsewhere, it is always the question of travel that makes for a perplexing debate and thus the paradox of UFOs.
The key design element of the museum takes on this challenge with the introduction of a fragment of a celestial navigation system.
The large warping surfaces imply navigation pathways through folding spatial references, wormholes, and inter-dimensional shifts, all current conjectures of space travel.
Design Brief/Interior: The main feature takes its cue from the Air and Space Museum, providing generous ceiling heights allowing scaled replicas of sighted/verified UFOs to be suspended above the floor. Specific exhibits include the history of UFOs, the Roswell Incident, cultural effects, land and sea encounters, and a new Hall of Fame.