Retrofuture.com

I finally had a chance to see a prototype Dymaxion car last year at a Buckminster Fuller exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It was impressive to behold.  Here’s an original piece I wrote in 1999.  If ever there was a hero of the Retrofuture, it would have to be Bucky.

If R. Buckminster Fuller had been pulling the strings of corporate America, it’s possible we would be living in a world of three-wheel cars, aluminum houses, and domed cities.Fuller never enjoyed that kind of power or authority. In fact, a good deal of his 24 patents and many other improbable schemes came to nothing. But Bucky—as he was universally known—was destined to be ahead of his time.

Born in Massachusetts in 1895, Bucky was a maverick thinker who spent much of his life on a personal crusade to improve the human condition. “Think about it,” he once explained, “we are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all, to feed everybody, clothe everybody, give every human on Earth a chance. We now know what we could never have known before–that we now have an option for all humanity to ‘make it’ successfully on this planet and in this lifetime.”

Bucky’s agenda was to do more with less. He wanted to do it in a Dymaxion—or DYnamic MAXimum ION—world. That sounded futuristic but the term Dymaxion actually meant nothing. It had been coined in 1929 by a department store’s publicity agent to describe an in-store display of Bucky’s new 4D House. To give the house a more “mainstream” name, the PR man invented the term Dymaxion, which became a trademark associated with some of Bucky’s most imaginative projects.

The 4D Dymaxion House not only sounded futuristic, it was futuristic. The ingenious design—which revolved around a central “mast” that contained plumbing and other essentials—challenged nearly every theory about housing construction. It also proved to be Bucky’s ticket to fame. The public was enraptured, historian Joseph J. Corn explains in “Yesterday’s Tomorrows.” “Fuller’s Dymaxion House,” writes Corn, “brought the concept of the home of tomorrow to the forefront of the popular and professional consciousness.”The key issues addressed by Bucky’s “house of the future” were important questions of self-sustainability, mass-production, pre-fabrication, and automation.

Another component was mobility–the 4D Dymaxion was literally a mobile home, light enough to be transported by dirigible. Utilizing aluminum as his main material, Bucky assured the house would be lightweight, waterproof, fireproof and cheap.

It may have seemed brilliant, but the 4D Dymaxion House never did fly. Several prototypes were produced but nothing on the scale that Bucky had imagined. Only the Dymaxion Bathroom–a sheet-metal stamped curiosity—managed to sell a few units in a limited production. The biggest problem, besides a few technical issues, were the banks, who refused to loan money for the project. This was a pattern which appeared throughout Bucky’s career, but it never slowed his productivity.

In 1933, Bucky dedicated himself to building the Dymaxion car, a three-wheeled automobile which allowed a driver to make a 360 degree turn on a dime. Modeled after the rudder on a ship, the rearwheel steering mechanism gave a driver an amazing amount of maneuverability. It was possible to move sideways into a parking spot if necessary. And if extra visibility was needed, a periscope came out of the roof for some added perspective.

Only three Dymaxion cars were ever produced. One of them was purchased by famed orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski. Another person willing to invest money was Amelia Earhart. But financial constraints forced Bucky to curtail his plans. Once again, obstacles stood in his path. One of these problems was completely unforeseen: the car caused a traffic jam wherever it went. In the book “Bucky Works,” author J. Baldwin explains how Bucky’s teardrop-shaped aluminum automobile had people dropping their jaws in amazement. He describes a drive up New York streets by Bucky “which gridlocked a significant portion of midtown Manhattan. Excluded from the annual auto show at Madison Square Garden, Bucky parked his car near the street entrance, effectively upstaging Detroit’s finest.”

But any lingering hope the Dymaxion might go into full-scale production was dashed when the car was involved in a fatal accident at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The car’s design was later exonerated but the negative publicity proved fatal.The Dymaxion name must have seemed cursed to everybody except Bucky because he was already busy at work on Dymaxion World Map. Using his self-taught skills as a cartographer, Bucky had fashioned a unique “flat” view of Earth which demonstrated how the geometry of geodesic–or curved–surfaces provided navigators with the most efficient routes of voyages on the open seas.

This intellectual exercise played a crucial role in Bucky’s most famous creation: the geodesic dome. The map strengthened Bucky’s resolve that geodesic lines—the shortest line between two points that lies on a given surface—were the most efficient way of enclosing space. After experimenting with a pattern of tetrahedrons (triangular pyramids), Bucky discovered he could create a dome whose structural integrity was extraordinary but which was also incredibly light.It was also incredibly striking. The geodesic dome became an instantly recognizable icon. Probably the most famous Bucky dome was the landmark created at the Expo ‘67 fair in Montreal. It has been estimated that 200,000 geodesic domes have been created since Bucky’s breakthrough, which means his buildings occupy more space than any other living architect.

The phenomenon of geodesic domes elevated Bucky’s status and he became, in his elder years, a familiar face on college campuses, an animated figure talking in a rapid clip to spellbound audiences. Some saw “the planet’s friendly genius” as slightly eccentric; others were enthralled.

Bucky provided an inspirational message for beginners; after all, he proved that a self-taught architect, engineer, philosopher, map-maker, car-builder, and house-designer could, with a lot of perseverance, become a celebrated figure who won 47 honorary doctorates. That’s right, we forgot to tell you: Bucky never earned a college degree.“In the year 2000,” Bucky once predicted, “mankind will either have destroyed itself or used its brain in a very big way.” Like everything about Buckminster Fuller, the accuracy of this observation remains to be judged–perhaps, in the 21st Century. At a particular gleeful moment Bucky once declared “I have discovered the coordinates of the Universe” and who are we to doubt him? Everywhere you look, Bucky lives.