Francie Rehwald wanted her mountainside house to be environmentally friendly and to be "feminine," to have curves. 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.
Sometimes ARTKABINETT fine arts social community just cannot figure out how to select the right space to house and display a fine art collection Now our social network of collectors has another option. Howabout purchasing your very own Boeing 747?
If so, now is the time to talk with your finance people and get all your ducks in a row. During the next two to five years, the price of used Boeing 747s may fall to historic lows as the global supply of dead 747s climbs to unprecedented highs.
The in-service arrival of next-generation widebody aircraft such as the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 747-8 means that several hundred of today's oldest 747s -- mostly 747-200 models built during the 1970s that are currently used as air freighters -- will soon be headed out to pasture.
Aviation Week outlines the market forces behind the coming surge in used 747 inventories:
Mass retirement is looming for the world's fleet of aging freighters, especially Boeing 747-200s. Boeing says that 40% of the 320 747 freighters in service are at least 25 years old but keep flying because strong demand for new passenger jets and delays in delivery of Airbus A380s have suppressed the supply of replacement airplanes.
James Edgar, a cargo specialist with Boeing, says the old 747s "will be retired in droves" in the next few years as airframe production catches up with global traffic demand and passenger transports such as 747-400s are released for conversion to freighters.
Inevitably, a few of these vintage 747-200s will continue to fly, and some may be converted into technology testbeds or supersized VIP private jets. (Heads-up Larry and Sergey!)
Most, however, will be ferried out to the desert, broken up, and salvaged for scrap.
How much will a used 747 cost you?
If you're in the market for an entire aircraft, expect to pay around $100,000 for a complete hull that has been stripped of reusable components such as engines, landing gear, and cockpit avionics. Your hollowed-out but otherwise-intact 747 will probably look something like this.
"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?"
The salvaged wings and tail flaps of a Boeing 747 will serve as the roof for this multilevel country home in California, as seen in an architect's renderings from the front (above) and the side. Ms. Rehwald, whose family founded the first Mercedes-Benz dealership in southern California, is intent on adding to the genre. She has reserved a junked jet to purchase, charmed local planning officials and spent $200,000 on consultants.
Mr. Hertz has designed homes for such boldface Hollywood names as Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame. He says his aeronautical inspiration struck after a long flight from Los Angeles to Scotland. The 747, he says, "though designed in the 1960s, is still an absolutely beautiful contemporary object. It was derived from pure function."
A winding one-lane road leads to the sunny hillside in the Santa Monica Mountains where Ms. Rehwald intends to create her architectural oddity. The 55-acre plot with views of the Pacific, now covered in aloe, agave cactus and white oleander flowers, is one hour north of L.A. It once housed dozens of buildings erected by Hollywood designer Tony Duquette, who built with found objects and industrial garbage such as old tires and radiators. A fire in 1993 destroyed most of his strange handiwork. Ms. Rehwald bought the land last year.
There he intends to assemble a compound of buildings connected by narrow dirt paths. The jet's wings will rest on thick concrete walls, forming the roof of a multilevel main house. The nose will point to the sky, becoming a meditation chamber, with the cockpit window a skylight. The first-class cabin will be an art studio. The signature bulge on the top of the 747 will become a loft. A barn will house rare domestic animals such as the poitou donkey. A yoga studio, guest house and caretaker's cottage will round out the compound.
"We are trying to use every piece of this aircraft, much like an Indian would use a buffalo," says Mr. Hertz.
He says the eight buildings will be scattered across the terraced hillside as if it were a "crash site." As it happens, the site lies under a jet flight path into Los Angeles International Airport. That concerns the Federal Aviation Administration, which has asked Mr. Hertz to paint special numbers on the wing pieces to alert pilots that Ms. Rehwald's retreat is not a crashed jumbo jet.
Ms. Rehwald says she has given Mr. Hertz a $1.5 million budget. She promptly adds: "I'll be real fortunate if it's less than $2 million."
He has already spent money on an archeologist to look for Chumash Indian artifacts and a biologist to tell her how best to manage the coyotes, mountain lions and rattlesnakes that traverse her land. Until then, when Ms. Rehwald visits the site, she stays in a Winnebago trailer borrowed from a friend.
courtesy, Aviation Week
