Last week I went to see Buck Fuller’s exhibition at Ivory Press in Madrid. In the relatively small exhibition space it was possible to get that sense of an idea of the future from the past, yet some of the works exhibited there still stand for some quite visionary concepts.
Buck Fuller must be one of the most peculiar and multi-faceted people that lived in the past century (maybe some sort of Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century?!). He was an architect, poet, mathematician, ecologist, designer, engineer… Was so many things and at the same time and maybe none of them.
The Dymaxion House was one of the main Fuller’s work at the exhibition. Dymaxion stands for dynamic (DY), maximum (Max) and tension (ION). The house was planned to be mass-produced and affordable to anyone,and I think its design embodies the idea of effortless efficiency and pragmatism.
The House was developed in the 1940′s with truly innovative features being a real sustainable project:Its shape was round in order to avoid heat loss, it was sustained by a central column though to be resistant to tornadoes and earthquakes, an internal rain gutter system, a fine-mist shower to less water consumption, a rotation system of the house for cooling during …
Everything seems to be perfect. But, why this house didn’t became popular and a common model of housing? Why it wasn’t successfully commercialized? Apparently the business vision of this project or the company’s management wasn’t as pragmatic and efficient as the house project itself.
Another example of Buck Fuller’s work present was a replica of the dymaxion car. The car was developed in 1930 with a futuristic design resulting from a combination aeroplane and auto-mobile technology. I took a look on the inside of this car and it is impressively spacious. This was another project that ended up failing and the car never was commercialized due an accident that occurred during a demonstration and killed the driver. The car was considered as non safe.
There’s so much to say about Buck Fuller’s intensive work but I will end up with one of the most emblematic: the geodesic dome. Although it was first developed by Walther Bauersfeld, Fuller was given the USA patent gaining with this work international recognition.
The geodesic dome has a sphere alike shape composed by a network of triangles. Once more we can see Fuller’s desire to accomplished results and built something with the minimum effort and maximum efficiency. With this design it was possible to built a dome in an easier way but with a strong structure, since the triangle network permitted to distribute the weight evenly.
The Montreal Biosphere, World Fair 1967
Extremely ambitious project of covering Manhattan with a Geodesic Dome
“Spaceship Earth” at Walt Disney World Resort, inspired by Buck Fuller’s geodesic domes.
