Now You See It, Now You Don't!

TellZall's object for May is the Dymaxion House.

The Dymaxion House, a dome-shaped structure that looked like something out of a science fiction movie, could have been a common sight across the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Instead, different approaches to the home's construction meant that Richard Buckminster Fuller's vision never came true.

Fuller was the architect of the Dymaxion House and a successful inventor. He had a great interest in how technology could be used to improve the world. Fuller himself created the word "Dymaxion," which was a combination of three words: "dynamic," maximum," and "tension." He used this word to describe his inventions, which were environmentally friendly, efficient, and self-sustaining. The Dymaxion House was one of those unique inventions.

Fuller built his first Dymaxion House in 1945, the year that World War II ended. In the years following the Second World War, there was an enormous demand for new housing. The construction industry had difficulty in meeting this demand. Fuller thought that the Dymaxion House could be a solution to the housing shortage, as it was possible to mass produce the structure and transport it to a final destination. In addition, his design was relatively inexpensive. Working class Americans would be able to afford this home.

Unlike traditional homes, which are usually created using squares and rectangles and have numerous right angles, Fuller designed the Dymaxion House using circles, triangles, and tetrahedrons. The house was held together by a suspension system that radiated from a column in the center. The main building material was aluminum, and Fuller worked with Beech Aircraft Company in Wichita, Kansas, to manufacture the house. The structure's design and materials made it stronger and more energy efficient than the traditional home of that era.

Fuller's vision seemed like the house of the future in many respects, almost like a flying saucer that had landed on Earth. Each house was designed to include two bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and a significant amount of hidden storage. The prototype included approximately 1,100 square feet of living space. It was possible to move the interior walls of the home, changing the size of each of the rooms. The Dymaxion House's design made it easy to clean and a predecessor to environmentally friendly homes of more recent years. It even provided its own power source and heating and cooling system.

Although Fuller's ideas were impressive, the plans to construct large numbers of Dymaxion Houses fell through. Within a short period of time, disagreements among the parties involved in the undertaking led to the end of the project. Only two homes had been built-prototypes that were originally intended to be used as sales models.

One of the company's investors, William Graham, purchased the two structures and constructed a single family home from them. The dome was connected to the end of a more traditional ranch-style house. Graham's family lived in this home from 1948 until the 1970s. No one ever lived in a Dymaxion House in the way that Fuller had originally envisioned it.

The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, obtained the parts from the last surviving prototype from the Graham family in 1991 and spent much of that decade restoring the structure to its original state. Today, visitors to the museum can tour the inside of the home, learning about the mathematics behind its design and imagining what it would be like to live in such a futuristic space.