747 Wing House

The 747 Wing House is a unique residential structure designed from the wings of a decommissioned Boeing 747-100 airplane. Located in the Ventura County portion of the Santa Monica Mountains, northwest of the city of Malibu, California, the house has been widely publicized internationally because of its unique design, its sustainable use of recycled materials, the dramatic transportation of the wings to the building site that was completed by a truck and helicopter, and its creative repurposing of abandoned infrastructure to achieve an architectural work of significance. The project was completed by American architect David Randall Hertz, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and his firm, the Studio of Environmental Architecture, in 2011. Working with associate Lucas Goettsche, Hertz assembled a team that was able to realize the project after many years of waiting on government approvals.

The house was built on a 55-acre property off of Cotharin Road in Ventura County at the western edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, northwest of Malibu, California, and was formerly owned and occupied by famous artist and Hollywood set designer Tony Duquette. Duquette's property was burned in the Green Meadow fire of 1993, which resulted in the complete destruction of over twenty-one of the structures that he and his wife had created from recycled objects and movie sets.

While standing on the property, Hertz imagined a floating roof that would hang over the site to minimize structural obstructions of the views of a nearby mountain ridge. Hertz's initial concept sketches showed a site section with a curved ceiling and a roof form that reminded him of the wing section of an airplane. The wing, a self-supporting structure, cantilevers off the fuselage of an airplane like an outstretched arm. This requires little vertical support and only a few walls, which is ideal for a structure to minimize obstructions and maximize views. Creating a wing foil shaped roof would be complex and difficult to build conventionally. Through examining and exploring a variety of actual wing dimensions, Hertz determined that the wings from a 747 would fit on the existing pads and that they were already oriented to keep the views. The low profile of the wings was integrated into the ridge top, and the wing made to appear to cascade down and float above the ground. Utilizing the wings as 100% post-consumer recycled components and appropriating them in creative new ways is consistent with the existing context of Duquette’s structures of found objects and emblematic of Hertz's thoughts on the "disposable" nature of our society.

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