Historia Diseño Interiores IED: Fuller Buckminster: Dymaxion house

As you might already noticed, I like to start my posts with a quote I find interesting. For me, a quote represents something more than just wise words. It is something that truly reflects a whole mentality, ideology, life philosophy, personality and character. Everytime I hear or read one, it is an invitation to start discovering more and getting to know the person behind it. This is what happened this time too, when I heard “ more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing “ by Fuller Buckminster.

Moreover, I found out that Buckminster was the first environment activist and that he has a lot of words associated with his work such as: spaceship earth, ephemeralization, synergetic, geodesic dome etc. He had this mystery around him that is also emphasized in his work. Fuller stated that one of his life experience led to a profound re-examination of his entire existence and he ultimately chose to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."

Furthermore, Fuller developed his first patent application for a 4D tower, a lightweight, prefabricated, multi-story apartment tower to be delivered anywhere in the world by airship. Once delivered the towers would generate their own light and heat with an independent sewage disposal system.

From then on, ideas and inventions seemed to flow from him in a continuous stream. Driven by his philosophy of “more for less “, Fuller developed “Lightful Houses” so-called because they were full of light, lightweight, delightful and so forth. This programme and his accompanying vision of a world united by the most modern means of transport and telecommunication evolved into Fuller’s philosophy of four-dimensional, or 4D design. He defined this as thinking in time instead of only the three dimensions of space: thinking of consequences for humanity instead of only immediate personal gain.

The project that made Fuller’s name was the 1929 Dymaxion House. The name Dymaxion – Dy(namic)max(imum)ion – was coined by the marketer Waldo Warren who, after listening to Fuller talk for two days, devised endless combinations of syllables taken from his highly idiosyncratic vocabulary. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times — all of them factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended to be suitable for any site or environment and to use resources efficiently. A key design consideration of the design was ease of shipment and assembly.

Made from lightweight steel, duraluminium and plastic, (ultramodern-looking at the time) and suspended from a central mast from which the rooms radiated in a hexagonal plan, the Dymaxion House was conceived not as private property, but rather as temporary, transportable space that could be rented – rather like a telephone issued by a telephone company. It was designed for the stormy areas of the world: temperate oceanic islands.

Designed and developed during the mid-1940s,with 90 m² floor area, this prototype is a round structure (not a dome), shaped something like the flattened "bell" of certain jellyfish. The structure is similar to the spokes of a bicycle-wheel hung down from this supporting the roof, while beams radiating out supported the floor. Wedge-shaped fans of sheet metal aluminum formed the roof, ceiling and floor. It has several innovative features, including a fine-mist shower that reduces water consumption, the downdraft ventilation that drew dust to the baseboards and through filters, greatly reducing the need to vacuum and dust and O-Volving Shelves required no bending; rotating closets brought the clothes to you.

According to Fuller biographer Steve Crooks, the house was designed to be delivered in two cylindrical packages, with interior color panels available at local dealers. A circular structure at the top of the house was designed to rotate around a central mast to use natural winds for cooling and air circulation.

In most modern houses, laundry, showers and commodes are the major water uses, with drinking, cooking and dish-washing consuming less than 20 liters per day. The Dymaxion house was intended to reduce water use by a greywater system, a packaging commode, and a "fogger" to replace showers. The fogger was based on efficient compressed-air and water degreasers, but with much smaller water particles to make it comfortable. The roof was designed to wick water inside and drip into the rain-gutter and then to the cistern, rather than have a difficult-to-fit, perfectly waterproof roof.

The commode, shower, bathtub and sink were molded into the structural shell in one piece. One bubble contained a step-up ergonomic bathtub and shower, high enough to wash children without stooping, but just two steps (40 cm) up. The oval tub had the controls mounted on the inside left of the entrance to the oval tub. The other bubble was the bathroom proper with commode and sink. The ventilation for the bathroom was a large silent fan under the main sink, which kept odors away from people's noses. All lighting was totally enclosed. To prevent fogging, the mirror faced into the medicine chest, which was ventilated by the fan. A plastic version of the bathroom was available intermittently until the 1980s.

The large wrap-around windows and lightweight structures were popular with the children, who crawled on the windowsill, and twanged the bicycle-wheel-style main struts. By grouping all permanent utilities in the central pole, and letting the rest of the interior space remain modular, Fuller created a flexible plan that would allow tenants to transform the space according to their needs.

He managed to design a home that was heated and cooled by natural means, that made its own power, was earthquake and storm-proof, and made of permanent, engineered materials that required no periodic painting, reroofing, or other maintenance. Unfortunately, although Fuller's energy-efficient and inexpensive Dymaxion house garnered much interest, but has never been produced. One of Fuller's Dymaxion Houses is on display as a permanent exhibit at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.

All in all, Dymaxion house represented the first conscious effort to build an autonomous building in the 20th century. In my opinion, Fuller wished to build a sustainable autonomous single family dwelling, but he managed to take the project further and create the living machine of the future.