Cover design by Lester Beall
Model of Dymaxion House
Bird’s-eye view of small model
Fuller with Herman Wolf, President of Fuller Houses, Inc.
Fuller with model of first house, which had a hexagonal plan and exposed cable supports. Raised one story, it provided parking below, an elevator in the mast.
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“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
–R. Buckminster Fuller
Inventor, visionary, philosopher, designer, the words that can be used to describe “Bucky” Fuller (1895–1983) constitute quite a lengthy list. Fuller was radical thinker who engaged in “the search for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution of humanity in accordance with them… finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more.” (Wikipedia) That philosophy was behind the development of his Dymaxion House, a hexagonal structure that hung on a metal mast. He first created a prototype for the house in 1927. It was a home that would be “sold for the price of a Cadillac, and could be shipped worldwide in its own metal tube.” (“The Dymaxion Dwelling Machine”, Buckminister Fuller Institute) The structure would offer air-conditioning, built-in furniture and allow for easy readjustment of the floor plan. Fuller quickly realized that his house of the future would have to wait until the materials needed for its construction were available at reasonable costs.
In the years directly following WWII, a new model of the Dymaxion House was introduced. The idea this time is that the house would be manufactured in an airplane factory alongside the planes, utilizing the same materials, tools and workmen. Though many orders were received, due to management problems at his company, the production of the homes failed to occur.
The only surviving prototype of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House is now at the Henry Ford Museum.
>> Dymaxion House flickr set
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Sandi Vincent grew up in the bay area of California surrounded by mid-century modern architecture and other influences responsible for her affinity for the period and its pop style, including her early exposure to The Monkees, The Avengers and Gerald McBoing-Boing. Sandi now resides in Portland and is a board member of a local nonprofit preservation group, the Mid-Century Modern League. In her day job at a community foundation, she sports the web/social media/print materials coordinator title.
Follow Sandi on Twitter > @SandiV
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Excellent! Thanks for sharing these images. I wrote a small post for Ars Longa a while back about Bucky & the Dymaxion House, and included a few different period photos of the structure interior and exterior. http://www.sllab.net/news/00001050.html