Shelter Magazine
Fuller's Depression-era pulpit — an architectural journal that argued houses should be designed for what they do, not what they look like.
In 1931, Buckminster Fuller cashed out his Navy life insurance policy to take over T-Square, a small architectural journal based in Philadelphia founded by Maxwell Levinson. He renamed it Shelter beginning with Volume 2 in April 1932 and served as editor-in-chief and owner through late 1932, when the magazine ceased publication around the time of Roosevelt's election. Fuller edited it semi-anonymously, not always placing his name on the masthead, but the editorial voice was unmistakably his: houses should be "designed for what they will do, not for what they look like," with aircraft, ships, and racing boats as the relevant precedents rather than Georgian columns or Bauhaus cubes.
The magazine attracted a remarkable roster of contributors and backers. Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, both connected to MoMA, served as associate editors. George Howe backed the venture from Philadelphia. Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Frederick Kiesler, and Albert Frey contributed pieces. Knud Lonberg-Holm designed the May 1932 cover and published an unfavorable critique of Hitchcock and Johnson's landmark MoMA International Style exhibition — directly in the pages of a journal whose associate editors had organized that very show. Isamu Noguchi's sculpture "Miss Expanding Universe" graced the November 1932 cover.
In 1932, Fuller co-founded the Structural Study Associates (SSA), a small collective of productivist architects that used Shelter as its platform. Members included Fuller, Lonberg-Holm, Kiesler, Archibald MacLeish, and Simon Breines. The SSA positioned itself against the architectural establishment's emphasis on style, proposing instead a Dymaxion House exhibition to MoMA (rejected) and mounting independent shows in New York and Philadelphia.
Shelter sits at a pivotal juncture in Fuller's career: after the Stockade Building System failure and his 1927 crisis, and before the Dymaxion Car (1933) and his Fortune magazine consultancy (1938–40). It was his primary public platform during the Depression years — the place where he first articulated design science as a coherent philosophy, built his network of avant-garde allies, and publicly broke with mainstream architecture.
See Also
- R. Buckminster Fuller — the central figure
- Stockade Building System — Fuller's prior failed venture
- Fuller's 1927 Crisis — the biographical event immediately preceding Shelter
- Dymaxion Car — Fuller's next major project after Shelter
- Dymaxion House — the concept Shelter promoted
- Design Science — the philosophy first articulated in Shelter's pages
- Isamu Noguchi — contributed the "Miss Expanding Universe" cover
Sources
- Shelter Magazine Research