7 End Product
2The inability to put the Dymaxion House into production did not stall Fuller’s career. He used its unusual characteristics to keep it and himself in the public arena. The basis of his business proposal was cleverly translated into the house of the future. In the process Fuller was transformed from a potential corporate executive into a prognosticator of what a house could be. He did not mind being considered a visionary but claimed he found it distasteful to be treated like a prophet.1 He, of course, learned to use such treatment to his advantage. The image of the visionary Buckminster Fuller became a tool to help the man Buckminster Fuller promote his ideal, industrially reproduced house. An early step was to strongly identify Fuller with the project. He may have changed the name from Fuller Houses to get away from the personal, as Anne wrote to her brother-in-law, but he never distanced himself from the project. Throughout its development, it was his project —he conceived it, he wrote about it, he promoted it. The Dymaxion House was neither generic nor anonymous. It was the brainchild of its creator who was ready to answer questions and dispel doubts. As the house was more and more understood as belonging to the distant future, Fuller more and more became the ideologue who struggled to make it a reality.
4 To accomplish his goal, Fuller would have to overcome many obstacles, especially the bias toward mass-produced, standardized houses. Not only was the use of industrial processes unusual, the materials specified for the house, metal and plastic, were atypical (figure 6.4). The mature model of the Dymaxion House echoed some elements of traditional housing, yet its central mast, suspended hexagonal living area, and shiny exterior made it look like something from a science fiction novel. Fuller’s emphasis on labor-saving devices made it seem like a mechanical paradise, an ideal house of which the housekeeper could only dream. While these characteristics put the house on the cutting edge of the home-building field, they also made it seem beyond the reach of contemporary technology.
5 Fuller, however, knew how to reconstruct a problem into a promotional strategy. Just as he reworked the AIA’s stance against standardization of design into a battle between tradition and progression, he commuted his first unsuccessful attempt at establishing a company to manufacture houses into a lifelong mission. Fuller knew the perception of what happened, the spin put on it, was more important than the event itself. He utilized this knowledge well when he turned his failure and the house’s uniqueness into powerful talking points as it became clear the Dymaxion House would not be realized.
6 As the one with the vision who conceived the project and with the drive to realize it, no matter how long it took, Fuller was its perfect spokesperson. He was willing to buck the status quo of the largely craft-based home-building field to bring the project to fruition. His Stockade experience taught him how to overcome difficulties blocking new developments. It also demonstrated that he had the strength and courage to carry the task through to completion. In addition, he came from a long line of radicals who went against the odds when convinced they were in the right. The implication was Fuller could be counted on to accomplish his goal because he was following a family tradition.
7 When Fuller believed the house would go into production, he stood alone as an entrepreneur, like Henry Ford, who would create a beneficial industry. The earliest articles focused on the house and its accessories; there was no interest in Fuller’s background.2 Fuller’s role was as the originator of the project, not as an object of interest.3 By 1930 Fuller was also a topic of interest, almost as intriguing as his unconventional Dymaxion House. His background and family history began to be used as important components of the story. Their use was immediately codified. For example, Inez Cunningham wrote in ‘‘Fuller’s Dymaxion House on Display’’:
1011Here is this young man with his Dymaxion house. He comes of five generations of New England Americans. The men of his family were preachers and lawyers. He is the grand nephew of Margaret Fuller, and all these people, who attacked the moral and social problems of a new world, are alive in him…a young person capable of such intense suffering that he must in self-defense refer to the race of man as the human family and attack its problems to forget his own.4
13 Mme. X, author of ‘‘Buckminster Fuller Explains His New Housing Industry,’’ followed suit, but added a few facts about Fuller’s personal history and his mother’s family:
1415This is a youngish man, Buckminster Fuller, who on his father’s side is related to some of the most famous New England families and on his mother’s side to one of the best known Chicago families…He is descended from a long line of ancestors, among whom there were in five generations five Harvard graduates. He himself was also a student at this first of American universities, though without any embarrassment, he says he was twice dropped…He has all the air of alert independence of thought which have animated so many celebrated Americans…He is now profoundly interested in putting before the world a scheme of house building which differs entirely from any hitherto presented to this country.5
17 Mme X’s article is one of the few places where any mention is made of his maternal relatives. His mother’s relatives were accomplished, although Fuller did not find the inspiration in their achievements that he did in those of his father’s family: his paternal ancestors were lauded for their fortitude in the face of opposition and their independent thinking. Both authors credited Fuller’s initiative and determination to his New England heritage, a legacy he would continue to draw upon throughout his career. As a man with rebellion, struggle, and triumph in his blood, Fuller was an object as curious and fascinating as the Dymaxion House.
18 He was not merely using his lineage as a public relations ploy; he was very proud of his background, especially proud of his distinguished ancestors. He was particularly fond of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, whom he learned about during the project’s early phase. The discovery excited him. In his great-aunt he saw a kindred spirit, someone with whom he could identify in his efforts to overcome unjust opposition.
19 Unlike the accomplishments of Margaret, which were unknown to him until he was in his thirties, Fuller had heard stories about the exploits of the male members of his family throughout his childhood. Lieutenant Thomas Fuller, his great-great-great-great-grandfather, emigrated to the New World from England in the seventeenth-century and founded the American branch of the family Thomas’s grandson, Reverend Timothy Fuller, a Massachusetts delegate to the Federal Constitution Assembly, had refused to sign the Constitution because it did not abolish slavery Timothy, his son, had helped found the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard where he was forced to graduate in second place as punishment for participating in a student revolt. Arthur Buckminster Fuller, Buck’s grandfather and a minister, had been an abolitionist who died leading a charge in Fredericksburg, Virginia. His son and Fuller’s father, Richard, was a merchant-importer and the first Fuller male in many generations to reject law and the ministry as his profession.6 Such family legends may have fueled a desire in Fuller to attain an appropriate personal history. Until he became an advocate of industrially reproduced houses, Fuller’s life was fairly average with typical low and high points. Among the distressing moments were the death of his father and first child, being forced out of Stockade, and his thwarted attempt to set up a company to mass-produce the Dymaxion House. Successes included his climb through the ranks at Armour, becoming an officer in the navy, his marriage, the birth of the Fullers’ second child, and the rapid growth of Stockade. No matter how personally devastating or satisfying these events, they constitute a rather ordinary set of ups-and-downs. Yet, with the right twist, they could be made into appropriate material for a tragic biography Buck’s life story could also become a Fuller legend with careful handling.
21 Creative manipulation of the facts of his life began after the publication of the articles by Cunningham and Mme X. One of the earliest examples is a press release for a 1932 lecture in Philadelphia. His life was presented in a positive light: he was from Boston, the great-nephew of Margaret Fuller, and Fuller men went to Harvard. He, too, had gone to Harvard but was twice expelled. No explanation was offered. He recovered nicely and eventually earned a com mission in the United States Navy He then successfully manufactured con struction materials, one of the rare instances in which his Stockade experience was treated favorably Hewlett, his father-in-law, gave him entree into the world of architecture.7 These facts were basically accurate. What were altered were the origins of the Dymaxion House, the project under discussion: ‘‘How the Dymaxion House Came Into Being—The Dymaxion house has been a conception in the mind of Buckminster Fuller since 1922, when he was thinking loosely upon the subject. In 1927 he went into the slums of northwest Chicago and spent eighteen months in systematic thought upon the subject.’’8 Nothing in Fuller’s papers suggests that he did any thinking, loose or concentrated, about industrially reproduced houses in 1922. He lived in the fashionable Lakeview area of northwest Chicago in 1927. While there he did more than think about the project; he doggedly pursued its realization. Such creative twists character ized Fuller as patient, thorough, and determined. In the late 1930s, Fuller began to alter other facts of his life. He consciously did so in a six-part, fifty-seven-page, autobiographical essay for Joe Bryant, a coworker, at Time, Inc.9 The purpose was to provide Bryant with material for an article, perhaps in response to the success of Fuller’s book Nine Chains to the Moon. Although Bryant’s article never appeared, Fuller’s text was not written in vain. While composing it, Fuller figured out which parts of his life he would tamper with and which phases he would not alter. Fuller’s lengthy essay to Joe Bryant was a comprehensive, if manipulated,narrative of his life. Fuller used it as an adjustable template of his pre-1939 life and work; it was repeatedly recycled. An excerpt from this imaginative recollection, in which he calls himself ‘‘B,’’ follows:
2526B resigned from the service in Sept. 1919 …daughter ill…Got his job back at Armour…$55 a week as asst manager of the NT division of the export dept. Raised to $80 a week when he quit in Feb 1922 to go with Eddie McDonnel…to be his national account sales manager for Kelly-Springfield Truck …but Co was soon liquidated…Another friend…had him recalled to active navy service…B decided to quit the Navy …his father-in-law had invented a system of wall building with rein forced concrete —pressed bricks of grass, excelsior, and any vegetable fibrous material…
27They started serious work on the building blocks—‘‘Stockade.’’ B had to invent the machinery for building the blocks. That fall, 1922, he went to H[arvar] P[rinceton] game at Cambridge, his wife and daughter Alexandra …coming to see him off. Just before her fourth birthday. ‘‘Daddy, will you bring me a cane?’ Returning he phoned…she had pneumonia again and was unconscious. Woke to ask ‘‘Daddy, did you bring me a cane?’’ No; had forgotten. She never spoke again…
28Threw himself into the job. For five years worked intensely. Built, in vented, and installed machinery in 5 factories around the country to fabricate units of a new building system. Built 240 houses out of shredded wheat bricks …put on an exhibit in the Own Tour Own Home show at the new Madison Square Garden and got 21,000 queries, with yoVo return contacts…But no house was built of it, because no responsible firm, nor integrated industry was handling the whole thing. …B’s nebulous deduction; people wanted good homes; they didn’t care about style, as long as they contained certain conveniences…
29On August 18, 1927, he was forced out of the company and out of the shares…Ten days later, when he was broke and out of a job, his daughter Allegra was bom. He didn’t tell his wife…until two weeks after the baby’s birth. They were living in the Virginia, a little old hotel north of the river in Chicago. He had only $50 to his name…Had only this $90 because…sales manager had borrowed $700 from him and had skipped to the West Coast.
30Now came the great crisis in his life. No job, no money, infant daughter, betrayed by people he had trusted. He walked over to the lake and thought about suicide. Should he call his life a bad job and throw it away? Or should he try to figure out some way to make it (all the experiences of it bit ter or happy) useful? He took stock of himself, and realized that he had had a full life…Here, on the lake shore, was his first real thinking about life objectively; its bigger meanings—hitherto he had been part of it without perspective…
31Within a few hours of this realization, an old friend from NY invited him to dinner at the Blackstone Hotel. Later, walking up Wabash Ave., he reached Monroe St. when a colored taxi-driver asked him the time. As B reached for his watch, another man slugged him with brass knuckles, break ing his cheek bone. Unconscious, he was robbed of his watch and his few remaining dollars…
32Instead of crushing him, the blow was what he needed to send him into action. He resolved to stay in Chicago and work out bis fate…Money? No matter; don’t worry; it will be provided. Self must be dismissed. The business must be straightened out, no matter how long it took.
33The first thing to do was to install his family in a small, clean, safe place. He found a one-room flat in a new fire-proof apartment building at Clark and Belmont, at $22 a month…
34B said to himself, ‘‘If you’re going to learn to think clearly, you must get into training. ’’ For six years he neither drank nor smoked; he took vigorous exercise and became a vegetarian…Decided never to speak unless every word was a necessity, coming from inside out…
35The day before Thanksgiving 1927, a friend in Joliet got him a job as Chi. sales representative of a Waukegan firm manufacturing floor tiles. Salary: $70 a week…He worked for this firm for 3 months, but found that the time he should have been putting into the tile business he was using for thinking. His thoughts were coming too fast. As a matter of integrity, he resigned…
36In Feb. (28) he was walking down town to see Ford’s industrial show …when he encountered the man who had fired him. B’s first impulse was to kill him, but with his newfound strength, he resolved instead never to mention the circumstances of his firing again, and told the man so. A few minutes later.. .he heard a voice say: ‘‘Ton think truthfully. From now on, you need never await temporal attestation to your thoughts.’’ On the way home came another thought; ‘‘From now on, write down everything you think.’’
37For 3 months he was like a man with ague …thoughts came so fast and covered so much that all his subsequent developments derived from them—Dymaxion car and so on. At the end of three months, the compulsion [ended] as suddenly as it had begun. By this time it had totaled some 3,000 double-spaced typewritten pages.
38Rereading his writings, he would clip each item as he came to it and say, ‘‘This idea might appeal to so-and-so’’…he would distribute them in 40 different envelopes. When the distribution was finished he found that the different sheaves of items had definite continuity, so he clipped the names off them, put them together and made them separate chapters of his book ‘‘Time Lock.’’
39He had no money to publish this book, and knew that it was too wild for any publisher…a mimeograph firm lent him a machine to be used at night, and gave him ink and paper. He even mimeographed his illustrations. He boiled his book down took out all the ‘‘ands’’, and bound up 200 copies. While he was putting the book together, another thought came to him: ‘‘You must crystallize this philosophy in design. Say nothing until then.’’…
40‘‘Dwelling is the largest objective use to which I could apply my philosophy.’’ Used to think sitting beside the water at Lincoln Park. Trees there impressed him particularly, by their ability to support at a height volumes and weights equivalent to those of shelters, also snow loads and wind pressures, and all on slender single supports. ‘‘There is a structural secret here.’’…
41Meanwhile, the Dymaxion house was taking form in his mind. He showed his drawings to the Chicago architects he knew. One, Pierre Blouke, sicced, a reporter on him. In April [19]28, the first news of the Dymaxion house was published. He was invited to speak at the Architects Club and did so; they invited him to go, expenses paid, to the Am. Architects convention at St. Louis in May; exactly one year after Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis flight to Paris. Half the city had just been blown down in a storm, which gave him his thesis. (His father-in-law was there; had just been elected 1st VP of the Inst.) B made no speech; he talked to architects individually and gave them his books. Back in Chi., he mailed out the rest of his books to a selected list…He spent the whole summer and winter answering letters and making models…
42That June, he patented the designs of the house and offered them to the Inst, as permanent custodians, so that they could never be privately exploited. Ironically, his father-in-law received them and turned them down as of no use to the Inst., missing the point of the gift. B found that the world adopted the house enthusiastically, but that engineers turned it down…
43In March 1929, Marshall Field asked B to show his house in place of an exhibit of futuristic European architecture…They said, ‘‘This house is so extreme that it will make our modernistic furniture seem mild and old-fashioned, and therefore saleable. ‘‘He accepted, giving half-hour talks with ten-minute intermissions all day for three weeks…people began coming to see his plans and models…His ideas were taking hold…
44In July 1929 …his family took a house at Woodmere, LI…He gave 20 lectures that winter. Had gained fame in a little over a year…He figured that if he could convince the ‘‘intelligentsia’’ ofNY of his Dymaxion theories, he would be alright…
45That winter (29 –30) he made a new and larger model of the Dymaxion House. …The whole year 0/1930 was spent in lectures, and that winter (30 –31) as well…
46The designing for the Chi World Fair was allocated in 30 –31…Harvey Wiley Corbett…was chairman of the architectural board…He
47became disciple (theoretically only) …B spent hours with him trying to ‘‘make him conscious of his social responsibility in incorporating the Dymaxion attitude of design.’’ No luck…10
49 Fuller referred to himself as ‘‘B’’ because he was drafting an article someone else would rewrite. He wanted to set the tone, the direction of the narrative. It is indicative of his tendency to dissociate himself from his public persona. In the Bryant essay, he created a dramatic narrative of misfortune, enlightenment, and rebound out of the basic facts of his life.
50 As previously discussed, some of this story was true, and some was not. A few of the fabrications were only used in this context. For example, a Stockade sales manager did not borrow $700 from him and skip to the West Coast, leaving him with only $50. Nor was his cheekbone broken when he was robbed of his last dollars and watch while walking home one evening in Chicago. Fuller dropped these fictional encounters since they did not fit comfortably into his saga. Writing these subplots was not fruitless. They helped him figure out what type of character he would be in his life’s story: he would be strong and resourceful in the face of adversity and hardship. Fuller realized that he did not need to fabricate such calamities since he could depict himself as routinely persecuted then redeemed by misrepresenting the events of his life.
51 The biography Fuller constructed was cyclical: he would do well, run into problems, bounce back, only to find himself in another bad situation, and so forth. Sometimes his misfortunes were commonplace, such as a death in the fam ily or the loss of a job. Sometimes the problems were his fault, like his troubles at Harvard.’’ Fuller preferred to present his difficulties as if they were caused by others, usually people who took advantage of his naivete or misunderstood him. He also liked to add theatrical touches to make ordinary occurrences seem particularly noteworthy (his reason for resigning from Muller) and his life more meaningful (his unsuccessful struggle to get the Dymaxion House into production). Analysis of this excerpt from the Bryant essay reveals how astutely Fuller engineered a personal narrative of struggle, accomplishment, disappointment, and rebound.
52 As Fuller wrote to Bryant, he resigned from the navy in 1919 because he wanted to remain close to his family. Armour rehired him at $50 a week, not at $55, and his salary was not raised to $80 as an incentive to remain with the company instead of accepting the Kelly-Springfield job. Arthur Meeker, a fam ily friend who arranged Fuller’s first job at Armour, encouraged him to accept the Kelly-Springfield offer because it was a good opportunity Fuller, however, worked at Kelly-Springfield for only a few months. His employment did not end because the company closed; his position was officially terminated because business was slow.11 After this, he reenlisted in the navy reserves as a lieutenant, the same rank at which he had resigned. It is also true that he again chose family over the navy in 1922 when he left the latter to go into business with his father-in-law. They founded the Stockade Building System based on the rough-surfaced blocks Hewlett invented; Fuller’s first task was to figure out the best way to manufacture the blocks. Fuller did invent some of the machinery required to produce the blocks and patented the mold and the process. He also attended the Harvard-Princeton football game and may have promised to bring his daughter a cane, which he forgot. There is no way to confirm or contradict his story. Although she was healthy at birth, Alexandra contracted a number of diseases. Among these were spinal meningitis, pneumonia, pyrolysis and pysoloszis.12 She died on November 14, 1922, a Tuesday,13 three days after Harvard shut out Princeton.14 The two dates are very close, and guilt about attending the game when his daughter was ill may have made it seem as if they happened on the same day. The combination of beginning a promising, new business with his father-in-law and his daughter’s death made 1922 a bittersweet year for Fuller. Whether motivated by guilt over his daughter’s death and his forgetfulness or by a desire to succeed or by an amalgam of the two, Fuller worked hard to make Stockade a success. His diligence was rewarded; the company grew and expanded rapidly Many types of structures, not just houses, were built using the Stockade system. He was explicit that Stockade’s problem was that it only built the shell and interior partitions, not an integrated house —a subtle plug for the Dymaxion House.
57 Fuller’s efforts on Stockade’s behalf did not provide him with a secure future. He resigned as president of the parent company in February 1927, and Farley Hopkins’s restructuring of the company forced Fuller out. When his second daughter, Allegra, was born on August 28, 1927, he was still employed by Stockade, if beleaguered by its management. Anne and Fuller were living in the Virginia Hotel when Allegra was born and stayed there until their December relocation to the Lake View. The Virginia’s manager allowed them to leave with out settling their account,15 but they were never completely broke or down to their last $50 as the diary and brokerage account confirm. Anne knew about her husband’s problems. She was sympathetic and supportive. Portraying himself as downtrodden, dejected, and desperate after being ousted from Stockade was a prelude to the next stage in his dramatic reworking of this period. The loss of his Stockade position and its income was a problem, not a great crisis, as the diary entries convey Even though Fuller was upset and angry, he was already working on his next project and had a new job within a month of being forced out of Stockade Midwest. The diary depicts a time of great activity and networking. There is nothing in his papers to corroborate his assertion in the Bryant essay that he contemplated suicide. He went to Lincoln Park many times, walking the baby or jogging, and could easily have found himself staring at the water in deep thought. In 4D Appendix No. 3 Fuller described his state of mind as ‘‘mental anguish such that must end either in jumping into the lake, or get ting up and bowling over selfish materialism.’’16 Ironically, this passage does not make Fuller seem depressed; rather, he seems so excited that he could jump in the lake or start a revolution. In American English, the phrase ‘‘go jump in a lake’’ is used to tell someone to calm down, or go away, which is consistent with Fuller’s usage; it is not used to direct the person toward suicide. As with so many other components of his life, Fuller reworked this simple statement into a declaration of despair. Characterizing himself as so distraught and demoralized that he was one jump away from suicide meant he needed to explain why he elected to live. The story presents him as broke, without options, unable to care for his family, and betrayed. Fortunately, he realized while standing by Lake Michigan that he had gained perspective on life and its meaning.
60 Now he simply needed to figure out how to put his knowledge and experience to use. To begin required pulling himself together and dealing with his responsibilities. He moved his family into a small, affordable apartment in a safe building, established a personal regime to clear his head, and accepted a job in late November. In subsequent versions, the apartment in a safe building became a tenement in a slum, the head-clearing regimen was transformed into a year of silence, and the job was omitted.17 It is easy to understand why Fuller later made his circumstances during this time seem so bad: his recovery was more impressive. The silent period is more difficult to appreciate. He planted its seed in 4D Timelock when he wrote that he spent time in ‘‘protracted isolation’’ and suffered ‘‘material self-negation’’18 while working on the project. According to Sidney Rosen, as he was standing at the edge of Lake Michigan Fuller realized:
6364A man could only know if bis genius was real and worthwhile by doing nothing except thinking for a long time. This was how a great philosopher named Descartes, over three hundred years before, had given birth to his genius; he had locked himself away in a little but for the winter with nothing but a little food, a stove, and his thoughts. This was how Henry Thoreau …found his genius—alone in the country near Walden Pond inMassachusetts.19
66 For Rosen, his subject’s refusal to speak established a connection between Fuller and important men. It is also used to signify a time of self-control and unwavering concentration. This part of the story was not formulated in the Bryant essay where he needed to present himself as focused on his potential and how to act upon it.
67 This required intense concentration. He was too distracted to continue working; therefore, to be fair to his unnamed employer, he left the company after three months. This would make February the month of his departure from Muller although diary entries indicate he was still there in March.20 Fuller may have been truthful about why his position at Muller ended or he may have adjusted the facts. It does seem likely that concentrating on his own project interfered with his ability to fulfill his duties for Muller. In any case, by February 1928, he was no longer thinking about Fuller Houses—he was taking action to make his idea a reality. His strategy included visiting trade shows to see if there was anything he could use. At the beginning of February, Fuller recorded his visit to the Ford Industrial Exhibition, but he made no note of seeing Hopkins or of a vision or of any insight.21 Fuller might not have mentioned his desire to attack Hopkins to avoid worrying his wife. He was being honest in one aspect: he never again discussed the exact circumstances surrounding the loss of his Stockade job. In recounting the story, he imparted only those details befitting his side of the story. And, given the amount of trivia in the diary, it hardly seems likely that he would have failed to record such a momentous occurrence as receiving affirmation from a voice, presumably a spiritual voice. The voice he heard that day telling him his thinking was truthful may have been his own internal voice. It was ‘‘an other thought,’’ not another voice, he informed Bryant, that instructed him to ‘‘write down everything you think.’’ The inconsistency is not obvious and may have resulted from Fuller’s struggle to create an auspicious beginning for the project. This voice informed him he no longer needed earthly confirmation of his ideas since he was receiving spiritual approval. He did not immediately recognize the significance of the voice’s message. On his way home, he realized he might not need temporal attestation, but he did need temporal expression: he should write down his thoughts. In reality, Fuller was hard at work on the project and had written one or two outlines. Fuller was disguising the origins of 4D Timelock and the Dymaxion House. The book was a business prospectus and an architectural manifesto; the house was a product the 4D company would manufacture and sell. Fuller never pre tended he did not want to put the house into production, although he later claimed he had arrived at the idea by chance: ‘‘I did not set out to design a house that hung from a pole …or to manufacture a new type of automobile…I started with the Universe. …I could have ended up with a pair of flying slippers.’’22 The only chance was whether or not the house would become a reality. He knew he wanted to start a business to manufacture houses. His first step may have been to jot down his thoughts, but writing down his ideas was not his main focus in the project’s early stages. Since he was work ing as many angles of the project as he could (networking, research, patent application, design development, corporate structure, and business proposal), he may have been ‘‘like a man with ague,’’ or in a feverish, agitated state. Nothing indicates that any of the months, especially not any specific three-month period during the development of the project and the writing of 4D Timelock, were more hectic than any other. Hrs anxiety probably increased as he prepared the patent application and for the AIA convention in St. Louis. The compulsion to record his ideas may have stopped once he felt he had adequately expressed them on paper. It could have taken three months and fueled his drive to realize the project.
71 Exactly how many drafts and pages were required to record his thoughts is unknown. If the existing drafts, fragments of essays, and completed texts are totaled, there are fewer than five hundred pages. This is a much smaller than the ‘‘5,000 double-spaced typewritten pages’’ Fuller cited to Bryant. Exaggerating the number of pages, like an external voice telling him his thoughts were true, helped make the project seem bigger than one person could manage and too important to selfishly keep quiet. Five thousand pages would probably contain redundancies. This may be what he meant by boiling down the book. In addition to taking out all the ‘‘ands,’’ removing repetitious points would help resolve how the original five thousand pages were reduced to ninety.23 He might have discovered the redundancies as he reread the pages and divided them into envelopes for different people. Through his classification system Fuller discovered cohesion among the ideas and decided to merge them into one big composition, 4D Timelock, instead of separate letters. Fuller did not elaborate on the problems he encountered while reorganizing the envelopes’ contents into the book’s chapters. He made it appear to be an easy, seamless evolution. Fuller camouflaged the fact that 4D Timelock was a carefully composed essay intended to attract investors by describing its creation as an almost accidental, three-step process. On the other hand, printing multiple copies of the book could not be treated as unintentional. It could be construed as an act of generosity According to the Bryant narrative, the book was mimeographed in May (he was hired by the Waukegan firm in late November; he left after three months’ employment, which would be in February; and it took him another three months, or until May, to write out his ideas). Even though he realized the book was a little unorthodox, he wanted to put it into print. He decided to publish it himself but did not have the money because he had been unemployed for three months. The situation was not hopeless; a mimeograph firm granted him use of its equipment and supplies to produce two hundred copies of the book, complete with illustrations. Fuller never provided a motive for the firm’s generosity although many possibilities ex ist. He could have known the owner, been a long-term customer, or negotiated a trade of some kind. Instead, the mimeograph firm suddenly appears, like the voice, to provide reassurance in the form of materials and machines. In reality the production of the book was not an act of charity Fuller explained to Hewlett that preparations for the Al A convention left him broke. The mimeograph firm may have been generous enough to let Fuller use its supplies and equipment, but it charged for its services and materials.
73 Since he mimeographed two hundred copies of 4D Timelock and its illustrations as a way to publicize his ideas about industrially reproduced houses and to generate interest in his business venture, Fuller’s statement that he realized as he assembled the book he needed to ‘‘crystallize this philosophy in design’’ is dubious at best. There are descriptions of the house and its components, especially in chapters 15 and 16. Furthermore, the illustrations are primarily of multilevel dwellings. Fuller obviously had a design concept by the time he mimeographed the book even if it did not adequately represent his philosophy
74 By this point in the Bryant essay Fuller had not explained his philosophy, only that he should remain quiet until he figured out a design to depict it. Unfortunately, he could not determine a design until he had an application. After much consideration in Lincoln Park, he settled on the house. Since his philosophy was not defined, his desire to express his general idea could have led him first to houses, then to transportation, and so on. There is also no justification for why dwelling was ‘‘the largest objective to which could apply philosophy’’ The undefined philosophy could have led him anywhere, even to flying slippers. Fuller did not end at houses, he began with them, and his desire to manufacture houses motivated the production of the book.
75 His design concept for manufactured houses may have been generated by a ‘‘structural secret’’ he learned by observing the way tree trunks support limbs and leaves. Trees were not, however, the only influence on the design. By the time he circulated 4D Timelock, the project had taken form in his mind. He did discuss it with many Chicago architects, including Pierre Blouke. Blouke was supportive and suggested that he send a copy of 4D Timelock to a Mr. Stemfeld, whom Fuller identified as the winner of the 1925 Beaux Arts Institute of Design Paris prize.24 Blouke may have introduced Fuller to reporters. But the ‘‘first news of the Dymaxion house was’’ not published in April 1928, nor was Fuller ‘‘invited to speak at the Architects Club,’’ which did not sponsor his trip to the AIA convention in St. Louis. On the other hand, Fuller’s historical context was basically correct: Lindbergh had made his solo transatlantic flight in the previous May, St. Louis had recently suffered a devastating storm, and his father-in-law had recently been elected vice-president of the AIA. Fuller explained to Bryant that he only spoke to architects on an individual basis and gave them a copy of the mimeographed book at the convention; he ‘‘made no speech.’’ Fuller also made no comment to Bryant about the AIA’s stance on standardization of design; perhaps he had not figured out how to make it seem as if the institute had responded to his project. After the conference he began a letter writing campaign that had run its course by September. Finally, Fuller and his associates made a model, or three-dimensional representation of his design concept, during the summer following the AIA convention. Although there is no record of it, a model may have been produced in conjunction with the patent application. If this was the case, then the model produced after the convention would have been a refinement of Fuller’s ideas in the abandoned patent application. He offered permanent custodianship of the patent to the AIA, more likely to procure funding than to prevent private exploitation of the house. Fuller approached Hewlett to act as his mediator with the organization. Hewlett may have missed the point of the gift, but he understood how undeveloped the project was and recognized the conservative nature of the AIA. Even though the AIA was not interested in Fuller’s project, there were architects, engineers, and investors who were. As with most new products, some people accepted it while others rejected it. There was no one group, such as engineers, who categorically dismissed the project whether they had been introduced to it through4D Timelock, newspaper articles, lectures, or exhibitions.
77 In less than a year after the AIA convention, Fuller generated enough interest in the project to justify an exhibition of the model at a major Chicago department store for three weeks in April, not March, 1929. Whether the store, Marshall Field & Company, asked Fuller to exhibit the house in order to make modern furniture look ‘‘saleable’’ [sic] or to make unfamiliar furniture designs seem exciting is not known. The opportunity’s importance, however, cannot be underestimated. The project was renamed the Dymaxion House, a more appealing although no more descriptive title than 4D. It was also the project’s debut to the general public, some of whom enthusiastically accepted it. Fuller could use the positive reactions in his negotiations with potential investors to show the project might be unusual but acceptable. Fuller’s ideas ‘‘were taking hold’’ by the middle of 1929.
78 Fuller and his family did move to Woodmere, Long Island, in July of that year even though he initially planned to stay in Chicago. Their return to New York was more likely motivated by marital problems than by Fuller’s desire to ‘‘convince the ‘intelligentsia’ of NY’’ of the value of the Dymaxion House. After be ing forced out of Stockade, Fuller wrote to his uncle Alfred and aunt Pauline that he planned to stay in Chicago since it was ‘‘a ‘hard boiled’ business section of the country but it is at the same time pretty much the center of the building and building material world. I am therefore planning to stay here for some time as I have plans for a new undertaking which looks even more promising than Stockade did.’’25 In the year and a half between this letter and his return to New York, Fuller’s project progressed nicely. There was a good chance that he and his project would be fine in the Midwest. His marriage might not have been as Fuller reminded Anne a few years later:
8081All our troubles started back in Chicago —both our faults; mine for a stupid notion of a martyristic [sic] monk’s…which had a horrible reaction…on both of us and nearly wrecked everything. Your fault was over money. When you deceived me first and then excluded me from your financial affairs, because you had lost confidence in my acumen; and…your brothers …seemed to offer so much more security and gain to you than I could, that you deserted me in many ways.26
83 At the time of this letter, Fuller and Anne were living apart in a ‘‘partial estrange ment.’’27 He was in Buffalo working on a prefabricated bathroom, and she was on Long Island. The letter helps explain the distance that had developed be tween them. When they first returned to the New York metropolitan area, Anne preferred to be on Long Island near her family and Fuller spent most of his time in Manhattan working on the Dymaxion House (figure 7.1). He and Anne were not as close as they had been in Chicago, but Fuller worked hard to support his family. In New York Fuller’s goal was to put the Dymaxion House into production. He worked to expand his supporters by lecturing and networking. Lectures were his main source of income, although some supporters gave him money. It is un likely he ‘‘gave 20 lectures’’ during the 1929 –1930 winter as he wrote to Bryant. His claim that he ‘‘gained fame in a little over a year’’ is true. In May 1928, Fuller went to St. Louis to interest architects in his idea; in April 1929, he introduced the Dymaxion House to the general public at Marshall Field; and, by January 1930, he was lecturing in different cities about the project.
84 It is not clear when Fuller realized the house would never go into production. He may have known this when he made the new, futuristic model during the winter of 1929 –1930. At some point he must have comprehended that his own future was secure even if the house did not go into production. As time progressed the issue changed from the specific house to the possibilities the house represented. Fuller became known as a man who wanted to help make those possibilities a reality. It is also why he later used the fact that the house was not part of A Century of Progress in Chicago as the point at which he understood the Dymaxion House would never be manufactured.
86 7 –1
87 Buckminster Fuller in Manhattan, ca. 1931.
88 Despite his relationships with Harvey Wiley Corbett and Lee Atwood, Fuller did not seriously push to have a model of the house built for the Chicago Fair. By 1933 his focus was on the Dymaxion Car, of which there were working proto types. He put the house on the back burner as he concentrated on the project, the car, that seemed more likely to go into production. The automobile industry already existed, and it would have been easier to adapt an existing industry to produce a new type of car than to create an entirely new industry to produce a new type of house. A Century of Progress provided Fuller with an opportunity to exhibit a functioning prototype of the Dymaxion Car instead of a model of the Dymaxion House that was still in development. As with so many other facts of his life, Fuller later transformed his decision into another stumbling block. Ac cording to Fuller, he was asked to exhibit the house at the Chicago Fair a short while before its scheduled opening. He would, but only if a full-scale prototype of the house ready for production were created. When asked about the cost to develop the prototype, which to Fuller meant developing the entire industry, he estimated it to be in the hundred-million-dollar range. The cost was too high for the fair’s organizers, the prototype was not realized, and, consequently, the house never went into production.28 Even though his request meant the fair’s budget would finance the development of a new industry, the implication is that the organizers failed to act because they failed to understand the significance of his proposal. Fuller deftly transferred the responsibility for his failure to get the Dymaxion House into production onto the organizers of the 1933 fair. Once again, Fuller presented himself as a misunderstood idealist whose efforts were undermined by powerful opposition. For Bryant, he treated his life experiences like a continuous cycle of achievement, stumbling block (such as misunderstood intentions or persecution by foes), and failure followed by a new effort. The Bryant essay became the template on which Fuller modeled his life story, with its cycles of trials, tribulations, and triumphs.
90 The Bryant essay is, therefore, the first installment of the personal myth Fuller created to explain his life, achievements, and failures. In The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self, Dan McAdams defined ‘‘per sonal myth’’ as follows:
9192a special kind of story that each of us naturally constructs to bring together
93the different parts of ourselves and our lives into a purposeful and convincing whole. Like all stories, the personal myth has a beginning middle, and
94end, defined according to the development ofplot and character. We attempt
95…to make a compelling aesthetic statement. A personal myth is an act of
96imagination that is a patterned integration of our remembered past, perceived present, and anticipated future. As both author and reader, we come
97to appreciate our own myth for its beauty and its psycho-social truth …
98in moments of great insight, parts of the story may become suddenly conscious, or motifs we had believed to be trivial may suddenly appear to be
101 McAdams also explained that individuals discover value and direction through development of a personal myth: ‘‘We each seek…a sense of coherence by ar ranging the episodes of our lives into stories. This is not the stuff of delusion or self-perception. We are not telling ourselves lies. Rather, through our per sonal myths, each discovers what is true and what is meaningful in life. In order to live well, with unity and purpose, we compose a heroic narrative of the self that illustrates essential truths about ourselves.’’30 Fuller’s personal myth helped identify and clarify his purpose in life. It also served as the basis of his public persona. According to McAdams, ‘‘In moments of great intimacy, {individuals} may share important episodes with another person.’’31 To Fuller, almost every episode of his public fife, not his personal life,32 was important. Fuller effectively conflated his personal myth and public persona to create a seemingly interpersonal intimacy with his supporters. The use of Fuller’s personal myth as a public relations tool is one reason for the cult-like devotion of some of his supporters. The documents contradicting Fuller’s personal myth are both a revelation and an unmasking. As McAdams explained, the sharing of one’s self ‘‘with another is the hallmark of interpersonal intimacy To be intimate with another means to share one’s innermost self.’’33 Such intimacy implies honesty. The knowledge that Fuller’s life story is a construction could be understood as betrayal by those who accept it as an hon est struggle of good (Fuller) against evil (his opponents). Fuller may not have consciously been telling himself or his supporters lies; he may have understood his past as such a struggle. Over time the lines between his personal myth and the actual past may have become too blurred for Fuller to distinguish. Personal myth may have become personal history for him. A significant influence on the development of Fuller’s personal myth was Bertrand Russell. Fuller was familiar with Russell’s writings and discussed them with Bob Hussey in early 1928.34 Two books and an article by Russell are in the 4D Timelock reference list: Education and the Good Life, Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell, and ‘‘The Training of Young Children.’’35 Fuller owned Selected Papers because Hussey purchased it for him and Anne.36 ‘‘A Free Man’s Worship,’’ from Selected Papers, reads like an inspirational model for the Bryant essay. In it Russell argues that the renunciation of self and selfish desires in combination with submission to Power (presumably God) allow a person to become a free thinker and escape the confines of fate:
109110From the submission of our desires springs the virtue of resignation, from the freedom of our thoughts springs the whole world of art and philosophy, and the vision of beauty …the vision of beauty is possible only to unfettered contemplation, to thoughts not weighted by the load of eager wishes; and thus Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of Time …by death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty, we must learn…It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to bear without repining the ruin of our hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets. This degree of submission to Power is…the very gate of wisdom…there is a cavern of darkness to be traversed before that temple (for the worship of our own ideals) can be entered. The gate of the cavern is despair, and its floor is paved with the gravestones of abandoned hopes. There Self must die; there the eagerness, the greed of untamed desire must be slain, for only so can the soul be freed from the empire of Fate?37
112 In his personal myth, Fuller crossed the ‘‘cavern of darkness’’ to stand at the ‘‘gate of wisdom’’ and entered the ‘‘temple (for the worship of [his] own ideals)’’ where his ‘‘Self’’ died and his ‘‘untamed desire {was} slain’’ between the summer of 1927 and the spring of 1928. Correlating, albeit misdated, events in the Bryant essay are his being forced out of Stockade in August 1927 and the patent appli cation for the 4D House in April 1928. It was also when he learned the folly of selfishness and gained the courage to pursue his own path.
113 These lessons were not easily comprehended. Their meanings were learned through despair, which Russell called the ‘‘gate’’ to ‘‘the cavern of darkness.’’ Despair, Russell posited, could be induced ‘‘by death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty.’’
114 In the Bryant essay, Fuller basically used each of Russell’s conditions as a metaphor for his own experiences as he struggled to find meaning in his life and to believe in himself. The first crisis was the death of his daughter in 1922, after which he was so despondent he threw himself into his work. Five years later, despite his hard work, he was forced out of Stockade. The combination of the loss of his Stockade position and the money he lent to a Stockade sales manager left him broke, poverty-stricken. No money, no job, and no prospect for a new position meant that he would have difficulty providing for his family, the second crisis. Such a wretched situation could easily have forced Fuller to evaluate all options, including suicide. As previously argued, Fuller did not consider physical suicide, although he may have experienced an epiphany or a moral suicide of his former self, or both. As a result, he found the inspiration to reject his past as well as the perspective to redirect his life along a new path because he understood that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, this in sight did not end his trials, because shortly after his realization he was mugged, robbed, and, one must imagine, left bleeding on the sidewalk with a broken jaw. The physical assault, however, strengthened his resolve to learn to think clearly and made him more determined to follow the new, as yet unidentified, direction he had so recently found.
115 Fuller wrote the Bryant essay before any of his inventions went into production and just as his ideas were beginning to be widely circulated through the successful publication of Nine Chains to the Moon. Over time he reworked the text and discarded certain episodes, like the mugging, to make the story less dra matic, more cohesive, and more believable. He also switched ‘‘the voice of duty’’ from the need to care for his family to the need to follow his new direction, to use his knowledge and experiences for the selfless benefit of others. Even though he changed some of the details he described to Bryant, Fuller retained both the structure from the Bryant essay and the concept of a life-changing rev elation from the Russell essay in the later versions of his personal myth.38 It is more likely that Fuller was calculatedly creative instead of purposefully deceptive in the construction of his personal myth. He may also have believed the misrepresentations were accurate if he viewed his life as a series of successes and failures. As McAdams explains: ‘‘Though we may act out parts of our personal myth in daily life, the story is inside of us. It is made and remade in the secrecy of our own minds, both conscious and unconscious, and for our own psychological discovery and enjoyment.’’39 Fuller did not keep the ‘‘discovery and enjoyment’’ he derived from his personal myth to himself; he used it as the basis of his public persona. Through careful design the story of his 1920s activities became one of his most successful public relations tools. This may have been the most important contribution the early period made to his career. Ultimately, Fuller’s work on the Dymaxion House project did not launch a new industry to manufacture houses. It did, on the other hand, provide a foundation for the building of Fuller’s career.