House Takes Flight in Malibu

Francie Rehwald is moving into a neighborhood where one house looks like a giant atom smasher and another looks like a flying saucer. But Rehwald’s soon-to-be built house with fit right in; her house will be made out of a repurposed Boeing 747 airliner.

David Hertz and his firm, Studio of Environmental Architecture, are behind the big plan. The firm is well known industry for building "green" houses out of recycled and natural materials. But it is his first house that will be built out of a plane.

The plan is to use all parts of the plane to build a 4,000-square-foot home and several other buildings, including guesthouses, a caretaker's residence and a barn. There will be an art studio made from a piece of fuselage, and part of the tail will become a viewing platform for visitors to look across the hills to the Pacific Ocean. The nose cone will be a meditation pavilion, and one of the guesthouses is the former first-class lounge. And the roof will be made from the wings.

The project hasn’t been easy. To transport the plane from the desert where Rehwald and Hertz found it over a year ago, it was cut up and trucked to the Camarillo Airport, north of Malibu. It has sat there waiting for approval from17 government agencies and the closure of five freeways to be transported in parts by helicopter to the house site.

Rehwald says, “"I love to recycle, I love green houses and contemporary architecture, and I especially love nature and the natural environment."

She is completely enthusiastic about getting to live in her unusual new house. But if she ever moves, she already has an idea of what she wants next; a ship.