Dymaxion Aeropod

[freebeard]

Premise: This subforum needs more traffic. This is my contribution, filched from inverse.com.

Upcycled Airplane Fuselages Are a Shockingly Sustainable Update on the Pool House



Also:

Forget Geodesic Domes, Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House Was His Masterpiece

The writing's pretty bad on this one. It claims the DDU had a central mast!!?! Then it says:

With the war coming to an end, the U.S. was facing a serious housing crisis. Fuller was commissioned to design permanent, single-family dwellings.

So wrong... Fuller never waited for permission from anyone. He only went where he was invited.

[acparker]

The DDU, as designed by Fuller, did hang on a central mast. The outer wall was not load-bearing. The central mast carried the load through cables that held the suspended floor. Fuller worked with Beech Aircraft in fabricating the prototypes. Beech would have been the principle manufacturer, had Fuller finalized the design. In business, he was his own worst enemy.

The Qube, in Vancouver, Canada, is built using similar techniques to Fuller's earlier Dymaxion designs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Qube_(Vancouver)

[freebeard]

That's the Wichita House.

The DDU consisted of a masonry ring with a tension strap, a floor made of corrugated metal and Masonite laid at right angles, a Butler grain elevator, custom compound curve roof pieces and a ventilator cap. All dismountable and portable.



There is a great write-up on the ghost DDUs of Nerw Jersey here:
https://alastairgordonwalltowall.com...inster-fuller/



Perhaps you are thinking of the picture taken during R&D )? It was being built from the top down and has an open top and a gap all around the bottom. That was when he confirmed the vertical vortex air circulation in a 'hemispherical' space.



Apart from the 1920s prototype (and it's 10-story version) and the Dymaxion House, the only other [unbuilt] example I'm aware of was a project for the Soviet Union, IIRC.


https://www.google.com/search?q=dymaxion+dwelling+unit (Google gets the credit because pinterest sucks)

In business, he was his own worst enemy.

Steve Jobs would have understood Bucky and his third prototypes.

I showed my son the Aeropod link and I have him half-convinced that instead of adding onto his house, he should get a 20ft section of airplane fuselage and have a crane lift it over the house into the back. He works in aerospace in the Seattle area and his brother has done that with a deck.

Edit: After I finished that article, I looked at you link. You dropped the close paren so confuses Wikipedia. Nice building though.

[acparker]

You are, of course, quite correct. I apologize. I read as poorly as the author of the article (probably worse). It has been about forty years since I read much about Fuller.

I do remember seeing the Qube back in the mid '70's on a family trip to Vancouver. I just caught a quick glance but recognized the design immediately. I researched it as soon as we returned home (pre-internet, so it took some time, but I finally found it).

Silo homes were popular (probably not the right word) in the late '60's and early '70's, when there was greater toleration for unconventional housing. There was a wooden silo manufacturer in upstate New York that produced a kit for several years. Metal silos are difficult to modify (not much worse than a container, I suppose), but folks still try.

I can't imagine that transporting a section of an airliner from Tucson would be particularly easy, but whoever said that architects are practical?

[freebeard]

Not to worry, if you hadn't commented, I'd never have found the Necessity of Ruins article, with the better writing and new contribution.

In the 1970s I worked for a dome manufacturer, who will go unnamed. I built and operated their first factory, but they didn't appreciate what more I could have done for them. The third time they fired me I stopped going back.

I recently found out there is a book by Fuller I didn't know about (I've still got most of the others): Cosmography: A Posthumous Scenario For The Future Of Humanity. I've got it from the Library; it's sort of Synergetics For Dummies.

Dappr Aviation is in Bury St. Edmunds. (Suffolk, UK). The boneyard in AZ is the biggest, Seattle is where they're made.

I like the 5/8ths circle cut of the Aeropod. It's hard to believe the walls are actually that thin.

[Xist]

Boneyard in Arizona? Would you disown me if I moved into a full fuselage?

When I look up activities for speech therapy, I only find things on Pinterest, which requires having an account, and then just links to someone's blog.

Why can't I skip the middleman?

[freebeard]

Au contraire. We would bow down to you as a hero.

Bonus points if it is on a pedestal and weathervanes to minimize heat loss through drag.

Pinterest lets me scroll half a page and then throws up a barrier with text I don't read before I hit the Back button. :middlefingerup:

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Even if it would be deemed too fatigued to remain airworthy, an old fuselage might still retain some resistence to be safely repurposed into a house. Eventually the aerodynamic profile would decrease the likelyhood of damage in a hurricane zone.

[freebeard]

I've always wanted a house with about 32ft of the front end of a B-36 fuselage stood upright next to it as an addition. The bottom 18ft would be a spiral staircase, and the top 14ft would be a lounge/observatory.

Still do. Even just a homemade 1:1 replica. With the babe-on-a-bomb nose art rotated 90°.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

I'd be satisfied with some sections of a B737 or 747. Would be cool to keep a 747 Freighter's nose loading door as a garage door