Artifacts of R. Buckminster Fuller, Vol. 2: Dymaxion Deployment, 1927-1946
A primary-source catalog reproducing Fuller's own drawings, patents, photographs, and promotional material for three mass-production dwelling projects, edited with descriptions by James Ward. The volume tracks Fuller's "Dymaxion Deployment" period — the years in which he tried to turn the dwelling into an industrially manufactured, air-deliverable artifact.
About the volume
This is the second of four volumes in the Garland series The Artifacts of R. Buckminster Fuller: A Comprehensive Collection of His Designs and Drawings, edited with descriptions by James Ward and published by Garland Publishing, New York and London, 1985 (copyright 1984 by the Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller; ISBN 0-8240-5083-5). Ward, identified in the book as a visiting professor at Trinity College, Hartford, holds a Ph.D. in the history of art from NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, with a dissertation on Le Corbusier's villa Les Terrasses.
The set is organized as: Volume One, The Dymaxion Experiment, 1926-1943; Volume Two, Dymaxion Deployment, 1927-1946; Volume Three, The Geodesic Revolution, Part 1, 1947-1959; and Volume Four, The Geodesic Revolution, Part 2, 1960-1983. Volume Two is essentially a facsimile portfolio: the bulk of each chapter is reproduced source material — engineering drawings, patent sheets, period photographs, magazine clippings, and company brochures — with Ward supplying a short interpretive essay at the head of each project.
How Ward organizes the artifacts
Ward arranges the volume chronologically by project, and within each project by design phase. The contents are divided into three chapters, each opening with Ward's descriptive prose and then giving over almost entirely to reproductions:
- The Dymaxion Bathroom, 1927-1938 — split into an Early Version, 1927-1931 and a Final Version, 1936-1938.
- The Dymaxion Deployment Unit, 1940-1941 — including The Deployment Book, 1940 and the two associated patents.
- The Wichita House, 1944-1946 — the Dymaxion Dwelling Machine, split into a Standard Version, 1945-1946 and an Airbarac Version, 1946.
Because the source pages are reproduced as images, the catalog preserves the look of the originals: patent drawings carry their filing and grant dates, brochures retain their advertising rhetoric, and shop drawings bear their original company title blocks (Phelps Dodge Corporation Research Dept.; Dymaxion Dwelling Machines, Inc.).
The projects of the Dymaxion Deployment period
The Dymaxion Bathroom (1927-1938)
A prefabricated, one-piece bathroom — described in period press as the "Integrated Bath" — that combined lavatory, toilet, and a bathtub-shower into a unit assembled from four basic stamped parts. Ward records that it was fabricated of burnished sheet metal with enameled areas above, with epoxy resin applied to dull its metallic echoes, and that Fuller hoped eventually to produce the roughly 420-pound unit in lighter, equally durable plastic. The later development was carried out in the research department of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. The final version is documented through U.S. Patent 2,220,482 ("Prefabricated Bathroom"), filed May 12, 1938 and granted November 5, 1940, whose drawing sheets are reproduced in full.
The Dymaxion Deployment Unit (1940-1941)
The volume presents the Deployment Unit as Fuller's "most feasible housing idea." Rather than invent a form from scratch, Fuller converted the Butler Manufacturing Company's standard corrugated-steel grain bin into a circular dwelling, reasoning that adopting an already industrially successful product would disarm objections grounded in economics. Ward's source reproductions — drawn largely from The Deployment Book (1940) and brochures arguing the national housing shortage — describe a round house whose roof panels open "like petals," snap-locked to a flying ring, with translucent plastic roof panels for daylight, plywood insulation panels sprung into the curved metal walls, and air-conditioning that let "midget heating units" hold temperature (the text claims round houses retain interior temperature far more efficiently than cubical ones). Ward notes the unit's low cost (about $1,250) and air transportability: hundreds were delivered to the Persian Gulf as troop shelter during World War II, but wartime metal scarcity ended production. Two patents document it — the Unit (Sheet), filed 3/21/41 and granted 3/7/44 (U.S. Patent 2,343,764, "Building Construction"), and the Unit (Frame), filed 4/9/41 and granted 6/13/44.
The Wichita House / Dymaxion Dwelling Machine (1944-1946)
The volume's largest section documents the Wichita House, prompted by wartime housing shortage and built with aircraft-industry technology. The owners of the Beech Aircraft Company in Wichita, anticipating a postwar drop in business, hired Fuller to design an easily manufactured housing unit that could absorb the loss from declining airplane production and keep skilled metal workers employed. Ward describes it as a cylinder with a dome suspended from a central mast, braced to the ground with metal cables and sheathed in thin aluminum sheets; interior partitions stop short of the ceiling to let fresh air rise and exit through an aerodynamic, revolving rooftop ventilator. Of its hundreds of metal parts, none weighed more than ten pounds or needed more than one person to handle, and the whole house packed into a small cylindrical shipping container. Ward reports an estimated eventual sale price of about $6,500 — realizing Fuller's 1927 ideal of selling a house at fifty cents a pound — but the project was aborted in development before reaching the market, and the later Airbarac Version (1946), aimed at attracting U.S. Government support, fared no better. The drawings carry the title block of Dymaxion Dwelling Machines, Inc.
Significance
As a primary-source catalog, Volume Two preserves the documentary record of Fuller's most concentrated effort to industrialize the dwelling. Its subtitle, Dymaxion Deployment, names the through-line: each project treats the house as a manufactured, transportable artifact rather than a site-built structure, emphasizing mass production over aesthetic convention. Ward frames the period as a hinge in Fuller's career — he notes that the reluctance of bankers and the federal government to fund the Wichita House pushed Fuller toward the research into tension and compression geometry that produced the geodesic domes of the 1950s and 1960s, the subject of the series' next two volumes. For researchers, the value lies less in Ward's commentary than in the faithful reproduction of the drawings, patent sheets, and brochures themselves.
See Also
- Inventions (Inventions) — companion patent collection covering the Dymaxion Bathroom and Dymaxion Deployment Unit
- Inventions: Twelve Around One (Inventions: Twelve Around One) — related inventions volume
Sources
- ../../raw/repos/artifacts-of-r-buckminster-fuller-vol-2.md — raw source pointer
- artifacts_of_r_buckminster_fuller_vol_2/ — in-repo source directory
- artifacts_of_r_buckminster_fuller_vol_2/index.md — title, editor, and contents
- artifacts_of_r_buckminster_fuller_vol_2/artifacts_of_r_buckminster_fuller_vol_2.md — full reproduced text