An American architect has completed what may be one of the most unusual homes to date – made from the wings of a decommissioned PAN AM Boeing 747-100 airplane.
The owner of the Studio of Environmental Architecture firm, David Randall Hertz, designed the extremely unconventional and environmentally friendly home, known as the 747 Wing House, on 55 acres of land in the Santa Monica mountains.
The main part of the Wing House uses only the recycled wings of the plane, which saved a large amount of embodied energy, carbon dioxide output, and construction waste. The rest of the home was built from the remaining parts of the fuselage. A 50 foot long section of the upper fuselage comprises the roof above the art studio, and the remaining front part of the fuselage and the upper first class cabin deck is used as the roof of the guesthouse.
The barn’s roof is made from the lower half of the fuselage. The home’s meditation pavilion is constructed from the entire front of the airplane and measures 28 feet in diameter and 45 feet tall, while the cockpit windows make up the skylight.
Two separate buildings make up the main living area, and these are linked together on three different levels. They were linked by using two wings and two horizontal stabilizers from the
Hertz purchased the 747 from Thompson Aviation for $30,000. Thompson Aviation cut apart, detoxified, and transported the plane for airlift to the building site. The cockpit and tail were removed and the fuselage cut longitudinally by the use of laser and the cut-off saws. The resulting parts of the plane measured 47 feet by 125 feet and were successfully transported to the building site.
