Word: dymaxion
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Buckminster Fuller, internationally renowned architect, inventor of the Dymaxion house, the geodesic dome, and the Dymaxion World Map, is living at Quincy House during his term as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry...
Another of his earlier mass-produceable structures, the Dymaxion house, revolutioned architecture during the 'twenties. Utilizing production techniques from the aircraft and automobile industries, Fuller made this the first attempt to apply modern technology to dwellings. The hexagonal house had no foundations; it hung from a central mast, thereby minimizing the danger from earth-quakes and obviating the usual necessity to grade the site before construction could begin; it was possible to erect the Dymaxion house in less than twenty-four hours. All utilities, including cesspool, water tank, and a diesel engine to supply power, were located in a mechanical...
Fuller especially values the transportability and independence of the Dymaxion house. For many reasons--the 20th century's great progress in transportation, modern industry's need for extra large warehouses in the country, and the high taxes and utility costs in town--man can and frequently must live outside of cities. Dymaxion makes this possible...
...cities, whether it is good for man to whimsically move his house from desert to mountaintop to forest without extending his own roots anywhere, does not directly concern Fuller. He wishes only to make possible what others want: he refuses to judge the ethical value of his work. The Dymaxion houses may make Americans even more rootless than they now are, he remarks. "All I'm talking about is a degree of freedom. In the future, those who want can stay on Beacon Hill and those who want can travel...
Originator of the geodesic dome and the mass-produceable Dymaxion house, Fuller bases his more efficient architecture on his discovery that the tetrahedron (a pyramid composed of four triangles) has extraordinarily great synergetic force. If one takes six rods and constructs them into a tetrahedron, the strength of the whole is far greater than the sum of the strength of its parts...