essays & effluvia: Converting a 747 into a House

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Converting a 747 into a House

No, this in't about the Google boys buying a 767; This is about a woman who wants to use a junked 747 as part of the design of her new crib.

File this under "Only in California:"

"Francie Rehwald wanted her mountainside house to be environmentally friendly and to be "feminine," to have curves. "I'm a gal," says the 60-year-old retiree.

Her architect had an idea: Buy a junked 747 and cut it apart. Turn the wings into a roof, the nose into a meditation temple. Use the remaining scrap to build six more buildings, including a barn for rare animals. He made a sketch.

"When I showed it to her in the office, she just started screaming," recalls the architect, David Hertz of Santa Monica. Ms. Rehwald, whose passions include yoga, organic gardening, meditation, folk art and the Cuban cocktails called mojitos, loved the adventurousness of the design, the feminine shapes and especially the environmental aspect. "It's 100% post-consumer waste," she says. "Isn't that the coolest?"

Unusual homes are nothing new along the coast of Southern California, long a magnet for eccentrics and free spirits. The "cyclotron house" in Malibu is shaped like an atom smasher. The "eyeball house" in Woodland Hills is a wooden silo with four giant glass eyes affixed to it. The "Chemosphere" looks like a flying saucer perched on a toothpick at the edge of a cliff in the Hollywood Hills."

New 747s run $200 million+. But going to an airplane junkyard in a nearby California desert saves you 99.9% of that price. Junkers -- decommissioned Boeing 747s -- go for only ~$100,000.

Note how the wings will be the roof for the structure, as well as the tail:
click for larger graphic

The owner's arrchitect had some trouble persuading county engineering officials to let them use the jet parts: "It's difficult to get a city engineer who is used to working with 2-by-4s and plaster to realize that an airplane that flies 500 miles per hour can stand up to 40-mph winds."

Here's the profile view:

Ommmmmmm. A meditation chamber, to be constructed from the Jet's nose:

Source:
West Coast Woman To Build Crash Pad Out of an Old 747
Ms. Rehwald Asked Architect For Curvy, Eco-Friendly; Meditating in the Cockpit
ALEX FRANGOS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, November 5, 2005; Page A1
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113105887937187799.html