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B. Fuller, bully

cf

http://www.noguchi.org/exhibitions.html#currentexhibitions

On the right side of the picture is Fullers Dymaxion House- an energy efficient house whose name combines the words dynamic, maximum, and tension. Only one Dymaxion house was ever built. When Fuller offered the prototype to THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECT, they rejected it, saying that they opposed “any kind of house designs that are manufactured like peas-in-a pod”, we reserve that process for the manufacture of architects.

 
Aug 10, 06 9:24 am
babs

oh please - please let's not start another aia bashing thread

the aia is a reflection of its members - at the time in history you mention, the views of the vast majority of architects in the country parallelled those you include in your thread.

Aug 10, 06 10:00 am  · 
 · 
myriam

So shouldn't this be AIA, bully? Your title confuses me!

Exhibit looks neat, thanks for the tipoff.

Aug 10, 06 10:02 am  · 
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Rim Joist

The title does seem confusing. I, too, was hoping for a Bucky-Fuller-beat-the-hell-out-of-me story.

Aug 10, 06 10:24 am  · 
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LostInSpace

I wonder who would win ina celebrity death match between Bucky and Isamu? There is a Buckminster - Nogucji exhibit at the Noguchi Museum in Queens if people are into that kind of thing. I haven't seen it but the Noguchi museum is always woth a visit.

Aug 10, 06 10:42 am  · 
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treekiller


The dymaxion house prototype was NOT energy efficient- alumninum has the highest embeded energy of any building material. the house had no insulation, had bad heat gain issues in the summer (that's why it needed to be so drafty), leaked like a sieve, had no energy generating potential, et cetera. For it's day, it was visionary, but fairs very poorly when compared to today's technology.

My money is on Noguchi - he was a stone carver- he could really pound that chisel. Bucky could only build with paper!

Aug 10, 06 10:58 am  · 
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LostInSpace


Noguchi, about to slap the crap out of Bucky.

Aug 10, 06 11:58 am  · 
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Cameron

Bucky was 29 when he first presented to the AIA. Naturally he was 'overlooked'.

Aug 10, 06 3:15 pm  · 
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PerCorell

Don't bully Buckminster he's one of my hero's Basta.

Aug 10, 06 5:32 pm  · 
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jabber

so Cameron - I suppose the quote marks represent cynicism - what's your point - what's your evidence that he was overlooked - what would you expect a large, complex volunteer-led organization to do everytime someone with an innovative thought makes a presentation before some AIA component - instantaneously corronate him / her royalty.

god, I get sick of this everpresent, unsubtantiated attack mentality on this forum that's applied to every establish institution

Aug 10, 06 9:49 pm  · 
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LostInSpace

Jibber, jabber.

Aug 11, 06 10:15 am  · 
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Cameron

Jabber, we just wrote a book that includes bucky and interviewed his daughter. It wasn't cynicism or crticism, it was simply stating a fact.

The quote marks meant I was quoting the man himself. If you did a google search or read any bio you would know that he presented the house on May 16 1928 at the AIA's annual meeting in St. Louis.

this was version 1 presented at that meeting. The one we are referring to was presented a year later at Marshalls department store in Chicago - Bucky decided to present directly to the public...


you simply expanded on my comment. Also I don't believe that the AIA was a 'complex volunteer organization' as you state - it is a trade association and one that pays their staff, quite handsomely. I think you read too much into my post. Were you sitting on something sharp at the time?

some more reading for you, this time Loretta Lorance. (How has also written on Bucky)

"Fuller claimed he discovered how resistant "exterior decorators" could be to his ideas in May 1928 when he presented the 4D House to the AIA at its 61st convention in St. Louis.(10) Fuller was promoting the house as the answer to the need for affordable housing and offered it as a complimentary gift to the association. This was a generous but naive gesture since its design was amateurish and awkward. The timing was also very bad because Milton Medary, the AIA president, opened the convention with an address criticizing "a growing tendency to standardize architectural design."(11) In addition, the AIA board of directors released a report stating: "It is quite possible that certain functions of the architect may well become standardized, but what of the art of design? Can one seriously consider the standardization of the drama, of literature, of music, or arts kindred to our own such as painting and sculpture? There is even now becoming evident in our work from coast to coast[...]a universal product made to sell."(12) Unfortunately for Fuller, his 4D House was a design for a mass-produced, prefabricated home "made to sell," precisely the type of structure the AIA was strongly criticizing and publicly opposing."

Aug 11, 06 12:14 pm  · 
 · 
cf

The complete article:
http://dsc.gc.cuny.edu/part/part7/articles/loranc.html



Fuller, as previously stated, shared this interest with many of his contemporaries although he disapproved of their use of mass-production, prefabrication and industrial processes. He was particularly critical towards the work of Gropius, Mies, Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. Although each had made important contributions to housing by the late 1920s, Fuller thought they failed to set new standards for both its design and production. He believed that they, like most architects, relied upon the machine to replicate or replace handwork; that they did not permit the machine to control the construction process. Fuller thought they designed with clean, simple forms which accommodated machine movement or appeared to be machine-made and this was merely changing the appearance of a building, not changing how it was made. He also felt they designed with some prefabricated and standardized parts which were incorporated into the finished structure, again affecting composition more than method.21 To Fuller, such techniques added elements of industrialization to the craft-labor construction process but were technologically conservative and did not significantly alter it. In Fuller's mind, Wright, Gropius, Mies and Corbusier were transferring the hand-production based Arts and Crafts aesthetic of the 19th century to machine production in the 20th. Their understanding of architecture was based on education and on-the-job training unlike Fuller who learned what he described as "craft building"22 as President of the Stockade Building System. This was a patented system of construction using fibrous building blocks. Fuller formed the company with his father-in-law, James Monroe Hewlett and was its president from 1922 to 1927.23 In addition, Fuller knew and read many important architectural texts of the time. His practical experience was more limited than that of the architects he criticized, but, in combination with his knowledge of contemporary writing, it fueled his ambition to apply industrial methods to the housing industry.


Aug 11, 06 1:00 pm  · 
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PerCorell

Yes ,--- and then it become obvious To Kill the Brick , how advanced can Lego be ? Efficiency make it nessery to allow designers to design hands on with computers allow the computer try do some calculations for a change ,see if it help now putting the computer to work , instead of lazy spreedsheets and database programs attemting to buy 36.345 items to place a building. This Fuller is one of my hero's

Aug 11, 06 1:24 pm  · 
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cf

Join today: http://www.bfi.org/


Further reading: http://bfi.org/node/533

Aug 11, 06 1:31 pm  · 
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jabber

cameron: you have my apology - I misunderstood your post and regret my own.

Aug 11, 06 3:17 pm  · 
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Cameron

no problem... I'm sure if bucky were around today he'd make the Yale blows... thread seem tame.

Aug 11, 06 7:53 pm  · 
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PerCorell

I agrea compleatly , quote cf ;

"he disapproved of their use of mass-production, prefabrication and industrial processes. He was particularly critical towards the work of Gropius, Mies, Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. Although each had made important contributions to housing by the late 1920s,"

Maby it is some of the same I call against DisneyNewConcertHall, the fact that the hands work are percived in a way that make architecture with no profit, --- when curving parts of a building , is fighting the heavy beams into a curve as if this was building a wooden ship and the steel profile was a heavy piece of timber.

I wonder if a dead end are reached, one Fuller allready back then, without proberly realising the full potential of the computer, could envision.

Aug 12, 06 12:02 pm  · 
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stephanie

my cat's name is buckminster.

Aug 13, 06 1:56 pm  · 
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