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Criticisms of the Dymaxion Houses include its supposed inflexible design which completely disregarded local site and architectural idiom, and its use of energy-intensive materials such as aluminum, rather than low-energy materials, such as adobe or tile. Fuller chose aluminium for its light weight, great strength, and long-term durability, arguably factors that compensate for the initial production cost. Aluminum was also a logical choice if the homes were to be built in aircraft factories, which, since World War II had ended, had substantial excess capacity. Yet while Fuller would eventually go on to find critical and commercial success for his geodesic dome, his Dymaxion Houses still may prove to be his greatest creation.
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Designers offer solutions to problems in the objects they design and create for us. The Dymaxion House could have, in all sorts of different ways, changed the ways we live. Think about how living in the Dymaxion House might change the way you live. If everyone lived in a Dymaxion House, would you be able to tell your house from your neighbor's?
R. Buckminster Fuller Collection
Wedge-shaped fans of sheet metal aluminum formed the roof, ceiling and floor. Each structure was assembled at ground level and then winched up the strut. The Dymaxion house represented the first conscious effort to build an autonomous building in the 20th century. Structures similar to the spokes of a bicycle-wheel hung down from this supporting the roof, while beams radiating out supported the floor. One of Buckminster Fuller’s initial housing experiments, a predecessor of the 4D Dymaxion house, was his hexagonal 4D Lightful Tower. Modeling Le Corbusier, Fuller promoted building up instead of out so rooms in the tower were stacked vertically on top of one another instead of next to one another as in a standard floor plan.
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Fuller referred to himself as "the property of universe" and during one radio interview he gave later in life, declared himself and his work "the property of all humanity". For his lifetime of work, the American Humanist Association named him the 1969 Humanist of the Year. Yet despite all these things going for it, the little metal house never caught on. In 1991, this sole Dymaxion House prototype was donated to the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan, which also houses such scientific wonders as Edison’s Last Breath.
Methods from X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy to energy dispersive spectrometry were used to analyze corrosion. A heat treatment was also applied to aluminum parts to stunt further deterioration. The final restored product now on display in Henry Ford Museum includes components from Fuller’s two completed prototypes, some of his individual trial systems and new components fabricated by The Henry Ford. Only one Dymaxion House was ever built, in the late 1940's in Wichita, Kansas. The Wichita House, as it was called, was a prototype house that would have been used to house U.S. military personnel returning from World War II.
The Lightful Towers were similar to the modern apartments we see today, the only difference was each tower was conceived as a single-family dwelling unit. The 10 deck towers hung from a central mast and ran off an independent power grid and sewage system housed on one of the floors. The tower could be constructed in a single day, after being dropped off by a zeppelin.
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Dymaxion House – Dearborn, Michigan - Atlas Obscura
Dymaxion House – Dearborn, Michigan.
Posted: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The concept formed the starting point for an investigation into creating a habitable, weather-resistant, floating city in Japan, but after Fuller's investor died, this proposal never made it off the drawing board. Foster said that Fuller considered the needles "his most refined design – the purest expression of 'doing more with less'" in a recent interview with Vanity Fair. The kitchen is a long, thin galley with appliances nicely built into the frame.
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He often made items from materials he found in the woods, and sometimes made his own tools. He experimented with designing a new apparatus for human propulsion of small boats. By age 12, he had invented a 'push pull' system for propelling a rowboat by use of an inverted umbrella connected to the transom with a simple oar lock which allowed the user to face forward to point the boat toward its destination.
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Inside, the house had two bedrooms, each with a bathroom, revolving dish closets and a built-in incinerator in the kitchen, a compressed air cleaner, pneumatic beds, and semicircular coat closets. [7] Other interior features included automatic doors, a centralized cleaning system, built-in furniture, and appliances integrated into the house. Fuller firmly asserted the integrated appliances would significantly reduce the amount of time spent on housework leading to additional time spent recreating. For example, the casein walls also served as Ovolving shelves which rotated vertically until one could reach the appropriate item through a hole in the wall. [4] Windows in the house never had to be opened, as one of the primary interior features was a comprehensive system of climate control which was so efficient one needn’t even wear clothes while relaxing inside. Produced in an aircraft factory and constructed from aluminum-copper alloys typically used in World War II aircraft, the inexpensive house was lightweight—less than three tons—and its cage hung from a suspended mast in its center.
Although differing slightly, each house is made of elements that could be produced in a factory and airlifted to different locations. Unfortunately, between the Great Depression and the outbreak of the Second World War, the world wasn’t ready for Fuller’s ground-breaking domicile. People lacked the money to invest in new homes no matter how inexpensive, and the outbreak of war saw the price of aluminum (the only material at the time light and flexible enough to construct the houses) increase tenfold. Yet Fuller, ever the visionary, knew that war would create demand for his cheap, mass produced housing. He started to work on a design for a much more simplified, temporary shelter that still incorporated his most innovative ideas.
As his designs evolved, Fuller really began to throw his back into making the Dymaxion as self-sufficient as possible. Wind turbines were added to the roof, septic tanks were incorporated into the bottom of the central mast, and a composting system was added to turn waste into methane gas fuel. With the addition of a network of vents and a more classic dome-like roof, a vertical vortex was created that could suck cooler air into the living quarters that allowed for a manual climate control system. In a final proposal for an aluminium scheme, a central column forms the main structure. Supporting its domed roof structure and flooring, with a window running in between. A number of "autonomous" design features are also included, like a cone that extends from the top to aid natural ventilation system and rainwater collection.
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