747 Wing House

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.Working with associate Lucas Goettsche, Hertz assembled a team that was able to realize the project after many years of waiting on government approvals.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.[1][2] Whilst flying in the air and pondering the design, Hertz imagined a floating roof that would hang over the site to minimize structural obstructions of the views of a nearby mountain ridge.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.Using a laser and the cut-off saws at the Victorville Airport, home of the second largest airplane graveyard in the nation, the cockpit and tail were removed and the fuselage cut longitudinally.At that point, because each wing weighed approximately 20,000 lb (9,100 kg) and the only way to transport such heavy, unwieldy sections to a remote destination was from above (navigation by truck was deemed impossible), the wings needed to be cut in two for proper positioning for transport by helicopter, which was completed by a Columbia Model 234 operated by Columbia Helicopters Inc. of Portland, Oregon and took over two hours to complete.Using the wings to achieve the curvilinear roof structure desired by the client saved a substantial amount of embodied energy, carbon dioxide output, and construction waste, compared to building a similar sized house made from conventional materials that would have to be transported up and down the mountain to the same location.