One Ball State University student designed an airplane disassembly factory to make recycling easier. Photo: Designed by Joshua Stowers

“A colleague of mine, we were sitting around one time, and I was telling him that there should be better ways to do architecture with new materials,” Eggink says of how he came up with the idea. “Then I remembered going to Arizona and scanning their graveyards — their boneyards. We have all these materials there. Nothing was happening to them, nobody was collecting them and nobody was using them.”

Though recycling airplanes and old structures for architecture is not a new concept, Eggink believes his students have the imagination and creativity to elevate aero-architecture to the next level.

“This is the kind of project that is of their generation,” Eggink says. “These are issues that they’re going to be facing. In architecture, our students try to solve problems, and throwing this curveball at architecture students is fantastic. They don’t know the end result, and they really have to work on it.”

via Ball State Class Challenges Students to Upcycle Old Airplanes | Earth911.com.