Dymaxion Deployment Unit

Fuller's 1940 round, corrugated-steel emergency shelter—an adaptation of the grain-bin form mass-produced for wartime military use.

The Dymaxion Deployment Unit (DDU), sometimes also called a Dymaxion House, is a structure Buckminster Fuller designed in 1940: a 20-foot circular hut of corrugated galvanized steel resembling a yurt or the top of a metal grain silo. The interior was insulated and finished with wallboard, portholes, and a door, while the dome-like ceiling carried a ventilation hole with a cap—an application of the convection "dome effect" Fuller had studied in his grain-bin housing experiments.

The DDU adapted an inexpensive, factory-made product for rapid emergency shelter. The Army Signal Corps commissioned Fuller in 1942 to produce 200 units as quickly as possible; they were manufactured by the Butler Manufacturing Company and shipped to military bases around the world in the early 1940s. Each unit cost about $1,250. The wartime shortage of steel, needed for armaments, led to cancellation of further production.

A cluster of DDUs survives at Camp Evans in Wall, New Jersey—now the InfoAge Science/History Learning Center—where roughly a dozen units remain and historic aerial photos show two dozen or more once stood between the base's large H-shaped buildings. Many concrete pads survive where units were later removed, having served for hazardous-materials storage and small shops.

See Also

• R. Buckminster Fuller (R. Buckminster Fuller) — the central figure
• Dymaxion House (link) — the related prefab dwelling and shared name

Sources

• Dymaxion deployment unit (Wikipedia)