Few conversion projects appeal to humanity's inner five-year-old quite like the plane-turned-house, even after mounting costs and regulations turned air travel from a luxurious-seeming novelty to another cramped, complaint-worthy mass transit experience. But that's no reason to knock this architectural gimmick, especially when some adapted aircraft end up looking pretty cool in their own right. Take, for example, Malibu's 747 Wing House, which incorporates pieces of a decommissioned jetliner, as architect David Hertz proudly puts it, "like the Native American Indians used every part of the buffalo," to such an extent that it was registered with the FAA to keep pilots flying overhead from reporting it as a crash site. Grounded for life but still living large, the most noteworthy airplane homes out there are corralled below.
↑ Should the cabin experience a sudden spike in fun, make sure to secure your own ride down one of creation's coolest twisty slides before you secure the ride of others. Speaking of your inner kindergartener, this retired Tupolev Tu-124 propped up on the grounds of an airport in Ukraine sports an exit ramp, of sorts, that he or she should find quite appealing.
↑ Located at the edge of Manuel Antonio National Park, this rainforest resort in Quepos, Costa Rica has a two-bedroom hotel suite made from a 1965 Boeing 727 that was trucked in piece by piece from the San Jose International Airport. The wooden pavilion built around the entrance goes especially well with the craft's unaltered red paint job, as well as the added teak panelling in the interior of the cabin. Hotel Costa Verde's website also mentions an additional pair of an additional repurposed C-123 cargo planes, one of which was "used to smuggle arms to the Contras in Nicaragua," and is now a "light meals eatery."
↑ London businessman Arthur Bedford got into the plane-home game long before its modern proponents jumped on the bandwagon. Pictured above is a 1947 photograph of the construction of a small home he had built from the fuselage of an Airspeed AS.51 Horsa, a glider used for Allied air assaults during World War II.
↑ Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton's inconceivably overpriced ranch? Put a plane on it! Listed last fall for $70M and later dropped to $48M, Newton's estate got this strange addition in late 2009, after officials at Oakland County International Airport claimed he owed them over $60,000 for unpaid parking fees after abandoning his Fokker F28 there more than three years before. Moreover, it was discovered that the interior of the craft was full of mold, so naturally it was retired to his backyard and filled with shiny marble fixtures.
↑ Built in 1960, this Ilyusin Il-18 spent its early years shuttling German government officials to and fro. Now it's parked in the Netherlands, living out the rest of its days as a luxury hotel suite sporting a Jacuzzi, an infrared sauna, a minibar, and a glossy finish throughout.
↑ Beyond the $100,000 or so he used to purchase this Boeing 727, Oregon aviation enthusiast Bruce Campbell spent a considerable amount of money outfitting this plane for terrestrial living: $17,000 to move it from an airport to a staging site, $20,000 to rent the site for four months, $21,600 to renovate the thing, and $25,000 to move it to his house. After all that effort and expense, he chose to keep much of the circuitry intact, exposing some of it behind planes of glass, which is why this one wins the Random Switch Award.
↑ This one's pretty wild. In 1974, a Douglas C-47 crashed in Chile with the ten-year-old son of the pilot aboard. More than two decades later, he found the crash site and turned it into a home.
· Malibu House Made Out of a Whole 747 is Finished [Curbed LA]
· The Greatest Playground Slide Ever Descends from a Jetliner [Neatorama]
· Costa Rican Hotel Made from an Old Airplane Takes Flight [Inhabitat]
· 1947 shedworking home [Shedworking]
· Wayne Newton's Overpriced Ranch Now Asks a Crazy $48M [Curbed National]
· Man Takes Feet Off Ground, Converts Airliner Into a Home [Curbed National]
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