Word: dymaxion
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...house that he hoped would be dropped from a Zeppelin on the North Pole, he designed projects ranging from a house that was hung from a duralumin mast to bathrooms with no running water (only an air hose squirting 90% air, 10% water, no soap needed). Among his other Dymaxion ("dynamic" plus "maximum service") products have been a three-wheel, rear-engined automobile and a house that can be stowed away in an aluminum container. None of them ever went into mass production. Bucky got a reputation as a man of tomorrow for whom tomorrow never came...
Bucky Fuller's name was once best known for its association with the Dymaxion House, the first version of which was a life valve designed to hang from a central mast containing an elevator. But today this once revolutionary idea is old stuff, and superseded by the Fuller Geodesic Dome. The dome is as big as one likes, made up of small spherical triangles pinned together. In appropriate sizes, it can be made to shelter anything from newlyweds to a railway terminal with less weight and hence less cost, and, Bucky hopes, be more resistant to hurricanes or atomic...
...energetic environment valve in which the Fullers flux-ate when Bucky is at home is definitely non-Dymaxion and infra-geodesic: a two-room Queens apartment with bath and kitchenette such as might have served a young couple beginning married life modestly in 1912. The living room is furnished in a combination of advanced geometric shapes and Chinese prints; there are some books, a head of Bucky sculptured in chromium, and a photograph of his beautiful daughter, Allegra. Mrs. Fuller, as befits the wife of a man concerned almost exclusively with the future, is apt to murmur "How nice, darling...
Bucky invented a series of Dymaxion bathrooms which were excellently designed, but demanded a great deal of their occupants. "Damn it," said an eminent architectural friend of Bucky's, "Bucky thinks people ought to get weighed while sitting on the toilet seat, brushing their teeth with a cake of soap and taking a shower from a fog-gun." An evil light came into the eminent architectural eye. "But I ainta gonta," he said. "I just ainta gonta...