The Home of the Future

On September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri, Japan surrendered, ending WWII. Discover how visionary R. Buckminster Fuller tackled the post-war housing crisis with his revolutionary Dymaxion House. Dive into this fascinating story!

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[Tintintanabulation]

Buck was a regular at a restaurant where I worked. He had large portfolios with his ideas and loved to talk. I enjoyed our conversations.
Later I became good friends with the man who had contracted Buck to design and oversee the building of a three story dome house.
And ended up in a relationship with the dome's second owner.
But i didn't know that Buck was actually Buckminster Fuller until i was studying architecture and designing my own home. I saw his artworks in an architectural history book 😊 and recognized them as my friends from many years earlier. THEN, I found out he was the designer of the same dome house owned by my partner 😊
By the way, domes roofs leak terribly, need scaffolding fir the simplest of outside repairs and cost a LOT!

[protatoplaysgames]

Just wanna get this up in the comments before it gets lost. Make sure to report and not engage any bots in the comments. Do not feed them :) and ty simon for not switching everything to ai :)

[Jayjay-qeum]

"War is the ultimate tool of politics."

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

[qwertyuiopgarth]

I was living in a geodesic dome during a hurricane - the stronger the wind blew the more stable it became because of the hemispherical shape. Lots of caulking needed during construction though!

[reecherdbrown]

If you look further into Buckminster, it will take you into a rabbit hole. Really fascinating guy and it's no coincidence that I only recently learned about him.

[Bonserak]

I love how he would just invent his own words to explain his theories, peak creativity.

[poozizzle]

As I recall the Dymaxion car crash involved another vehicle that was removed from the scene before reporters got there.

[mrcory]

They have a great example of the dymaxion house at the Henry Ford Museum in detroit. It is a very interesting concept

[ronmorrell]

A friend of mine built a geodesic dome house with excellent insulation and hot-water floor-heating. It was a warm refuge from cold winters for his small children, at very minimal heating cost. I don't know how it worked in the summer, but suspect the relatively small surface area was again a boon.

[Shaostoul]

Sincerely, thank you for this! Since 2017 I've been trying to figure out how to develop a video game capable of ending poverty in real-life. Essentially following the concept of maximum gain of advantage from minimal energy input, but for everything we can manage to teach, help with, and provide through a video game. It's crazy thinking back through everything I've done and how unintentionally close I've followed in the footsteps of those I didn't know about. I've been aware of buckyballs and my dad built an aluminum geodesic dome still in our backyard. Now this with the term dymaxion and seeing these homes he's designed... I'm essentially trying to do the same thing through the game! What a wonderfully weird reality we inhabit. I guess in a way he's helping me achieve my dream of ending poverty in pursuit of uniting humanity and by extension you with this wonderful video (and all your others.) Love ya man, hope life's treating you well.

[beckyowens]

I had no idea there was a geodesic dome home in in Carbondale Illinois. That's just like an hour away! Not even quite an hour!

[lisaconstant]

My grandpa work for Beachcraft in Wichita KS before, during and after WW2. He retired in the 70's. I never heard about this. Very interesting.

[MrG]

We have two of his geodesic domes here in Vancouver Canada. A large full dome was a centerpiece for the Expo 86 world fair and a conservatory filled with exotic plants, fish, birds and so on at the top of Queen Elizabeth Park. Both structures still standing and functional and still sort of futuristic.

[Artyomthewalrus]

Honestly, my dream is to build a geodesic dome - them things make fantastic greenhouses. Maybe not practical for industrial use of course

[richardfeldkamp]

In the mid 70's there were 2 large format paperback books put out, Domebook and Domebook2. These took Fuller's concepts and magnified and adapted them to all sorts of geodesic buildings from regular domes, ellipsoids, and so on. They were geared to the mathematically and mechanically adept hippy.

[RandomGreymane]

Somewhere I have a response letter from “Bucky” when I sent him a question about making a dome playhouse.

My dad almost ruined it when he started to erase the original pencil lines showing around the inked lines. Thankfully we stopped him.

I honestly don’t recall where it’s gone to but I know I still have it.

[ZippoX]

I've been in one of those houses, super cool

[TheKulu]

I think those houses made during World War II would have been fine for providing lots of homes quickly after a natural disaster or as a way to provide shelter to the homeless. If Fuller had designed homes that looked more conventional and were designed with expansion and ultimately individualization in mind, he might have had more success.

[samaraclark]

Love this video because I learned something new about my home town. Simon please keep up with all the hard work you and your writers do for all your videos.

[andywellsglobaldomination]

By the mid 1970s there were three or four geodesic domes built where I was in Lauderdale County, Alabama. None of them survived the turn of the century.