X-Message-Number: 29221
Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 06:42:04 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Fullercrap
References: <>

Mark Plus writes:

> I see no evidence of that. American contractors still build houses like
> their grandfathers did in the 1950's, only bigger. You see them popping up
> all over Arizona, with no consideration towards making them resource and
> energy-efficient, much less aesthetically pleasing.

Buckminster Fuller had entertaining ideas which appealed to
people who were as naive as he was about actually making them
work. He was loved because he made complicated problems seem
simple. In fact, they are complicated.

I had experience designing and building an unconventional
structure with a geodesic roof. I met Stewart Brand (the
Whole Earth guy himself) at a party and mentioned my plan. "I
hope you realize," he said, "that every single geodesic dome
I have ever visited has leaked." This should be no surprise,
when you think about it. A dome is composed of butt-jointed
panels. No sane person would make a roof this way. Roof
design has evolved over centuries (since the age of thatch
and slate) and always uses overlapping panels.

As for people being reluctant to live in actual domes, the
whole idea was always crazy. Furniture is rectangular (for
other design reasons which are valid) and fits in rectangular
corners against vertical walls. Vertical walls are useful for
other purposes also--hanging pictures, kitchen cabinets, book
cases.

If a dome was cheaper to build, easier to insulate, and more
practical to live in, maybe we'd be living in domes. In fact
they are harder to build, not easier to insulate, and not
practical to live in. Those cookie-cutter houses which Mark
disparages are masterpieces of practical design: Quick to
build, very cheap, spacious, and relatively energy-efficient.

I thought a lot about thermal mass to insulate a house in
Northern Arizona. Finally I realized that the most practical
and efficient forms of insulation are already on the shelves
at Home Depot, with R numbers to indicate their efficiency.

Anyone who wants the future to happen (as I do, and as Mark
does) must realize that it has to be consumer-driven and has
to be cost-effective.

> Regarding Fuller's earlier ideas for a Dymaxion House, a model of which he
> built near Wichita, the History Channel has a video on this page about it as
> a "failed invention":

Yes, like many of the beautiful designs by Frank Lloyd
Wright. When I visited Taliesen, the great showplace for his
work, and looked at the small initial lobby area where there
are no right angles at all, with a transparent plastic roof,
I asked, "Does this thing leak?" The guide became quite angry
with me but, in fact, it does leak, and so apparently did
his most celebrated house, Falling Water.

> As for Fuller's social science ideas, nobody taken seriously these days
> talks about providing for "100 percent of humanity" through some conjectural
> "design science revolution." Fuller anticipated the need to eliminate our
> civilization's dependence on petroleum, but the programming in our brains
> that leads to collapse and dieoff has set the policy regarding the use of
> decliining fossil fuels to perpetuate human genes. (I'll have more to say
> about this if/when the General Accounting Office releases its report on Peak
> Oil in a few weeks.)

As soon as the price of oil becomes a real disincentive,
there will be no shortage of substitutes. Desperation is a
great fuel for innovation. But futurists such as Fuller were
not motivated by such practical considerations. He was
prescriptive in an almost Marxist style. The Dymaxion House
was "good for you and good for the planet." Maybe so, but I
notice Al Gore doesn't live in one.

--Charles Platt

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