Buckminster Fuller, Dimaxyon House, Chicago, USA, 1927

About the Architect :

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor.

Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as “Spaceship Earth”, ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres.

Fuller was the second World President of Mensa from 1974 to 1983.

About the House :

In 1927, the American modernist architect R. Buchminster Fuller built his famous Dymaxion House, A glass octagonal structure supported by a steel frame, one of the first in a history of “homes of tomorrow” to include a television set. When Fuller’s house was first displayed to the public in 1929 at Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago, it was scarcely more than a science fiction oddity to the curious onlookers who were told that the home would one day be produced on assembly lines across the nation. The Dymaxion House was a hexagonal design suspended from a central mast. The project is based on a central vertical stainless one-piece strut. The hangings support the roof. And there are radial supporting beams on the floor. The Dymaxion house represents the first effort to build a stand-alone building in the twentieth century. Fuller introduces the concepts of weight of the house, prefabrication and timing of construction. Thy are absolutely fundamental issues for what is called the “temporary architecture” today. Fuller said that functional rather than aesthetic considerations determined his choice. “We did nothing arbitrary,” he emphasized. “We were not trying to make a cute house. Its shape is due to the solution of our problems of space, weight and mass production.”

Bibliographical references:

Spigel, L. (1992). Make room for TV: Television and the family ideal in postwar America. University of Chicago Press.

Villa, V. (2012). Beach camp.

Selected links:

http://www.efimeras.com/wordpress/?p=1499

http://presstletter.com/2012/01/larchitettura-raccontata-da-lpp-3-2-16/

http://roundhouses.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/dreaming-of-a-dymaxion-house/#more-1451

Reviewed by Esteve P.