Ball State architects dream up new uses for old planes

MUNCIE Imagine youre on a plane.

Except youre not really going to fly anywhere. And while youre sitting inside the fuselage, youre actually... at a bus stop.

Ball State University architecture students are dreaming up second lives to recycle old airplanes. What if, they asked themselves, instead of sending retired aircrafts to graveyards to rust, they could be used to build bus stops and apartment complexes and emergency relief huts?

What really interested me is reusing something thats literally going to sit in a wasteyard, said second-year architecture masters student Daniel Potash, 23, who designed the bus stop. Why not reuse it?

Think of the strength and the size of an airplane the enormous amounts of pressure and extreme temperatures it must withstand, and the hefty amounts of weight it must carry.

The potential of its parts is a playground for an architects imagination. Its an intriguing concept, even if the experimental sketches may never be realized.

Like many brilliant ideas, this one originated at a bar.

About four years ago, Professor Harry Eggink had been toying with the concept of reusing airplanes and explored it a little with one of his advanced architecture classes. He brought some designs with him when he went to a bar with his youngest son and friends a bunch of aeronautical engineers.

Let me show you a couple of things, he said.

The feedback: Why arent we doing this already?

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Ball State architects dream up new uses for old planes