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Boeing 747 Recycled Into a Private Residence
Ponca City writes "Nicholas Jackson writes in the Atlantic about a woman who requested only curvilinear/feminine shapes for her new home and has purchased an entire Boeing 747-200. They transported it by helicopter to her 55-acre property in the remote hills of Malibu and after deconstructing it, had all 4,500,000 pieces put back together to form a main house and six ancillary structures including a meditation pavilion, an animal barn, and an art studio building. 'The scale of a 747 aircraft is enormous — over 230 feet long, 195 feet wide and 63 feet tall with over 17,000 cubic feet of cargo area alone and represents a tremendous amount of material for a very economical price of less than $50,000,' writes Architect David Hertz. 'In researching airplane wings and superimposing different airplane wing types on the site to scale, the wing of a 747, at over 2,500 sq. ft., became an ideal configuration to maximize the views and provide a self supporting roof with minimal additional structural support needed.' Called the 'Wing House,' as a structure and engineering achievement, the aircraft encloses an enormous amount of space using the least amount of materials in a very resourceful and efficient manner, and the recycling of the 4.5 million parts of this 'big aluminum can' is seen as an extreme example of sustainable reuse and appropriation. Interestingly enough, the architects had to register the roof of the house with the FAA so pilots flying overhead would not mistake it as a downed aircraft."
A guy here in Oregon had the same idea, but without the architectural finesse: http://www.airplanehome.com/
A lot of people have built homes from disused airplanes. Nothing new there.
This is "much ado about nothing" from a rich woman interested in some self-serving publicity about how wonderful she is.
A "meditation pavilion"? Really? She recycles a couple wings, which are rather easily to recycle anyway by melting them down, but then throw away most of the airplane instead of using the fuselage as a home. Then, as others have mentioned, she cuts the top off a mountain for her feminine palace-thing.
And the "use all parts of the Buffalo" quote is more self-serving crap. First of all, it's a Bison, not a Buffalo. Second, they only "used all parts" because they were bloody hard to obtain. You try killing a giant, angry bull with a rock and a stick and see how hard it is.
When times were good, and they had lots of bison, they just cut off the best parts and left the rest to rot--this can be documented from the multiple "buffalo jump" sites where they chased Bison off cliffs. You take all the parts from a couple because you need them, but when it gets down to the end, you just cut off the humps and tongues. The "perfectly ecological Native American" is a myth invented by Europeans. The Native Americans are the same as humans all over the globe. What a shock.
Because she wanted *feminine* shapes, and without the wings a 747 looks anything but ;-)
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Your comment reminds me of Futurama; when the Planet Express is being dragged under the ocean, Proferror Farnsworth is asked how many atmospheres of pressure the ship can take, and he says that because it's a spaceship, it was designed to withstand, "between zero and one".
Don't take it personally, but I'm not going to read your pithy response to my post.
Most planes employ a self-adjusting louvre system that continuously pushes in the right amount of air to keep cabin pressure at the right level. When the amount of air coming in equals the amount of air flowing out (and there most certainly is air flowing out), cabin pressure is equalized.
They do seal the doors, for passenger comfort. Yet, the plane is definitely not 100% airtight. Or watertight for that matter.