Het Huis Stoclet in Brussel - Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten Aalst

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supporting structure in a circular shape designed to provide the most advantageous relationship between circumference and interior space. The unit was designed to be set up and taken down easily. Metal for its construction was, however, never made available by the British Government as it was needed for the production of armaments. When the US entered World War II, Fuller’s units were commissioned as emergency accommodation for the air force. As relationships between the superpowers fluctuated during the war, Fuller became convinced of the need to develop a world map on which the whole globe could be seen at once; a map better suited than the standard Mercator Projection to the representation of global relationships. The Dymaxion World Map was his attempt to resolve the problem of how best to represent a spherical world on a flat surface, with true scale, true direction and correct configuration. In orthodox cartography to present one of these attributes accurately others must be distorted but The Dymaxion World Map’s distortions are distributed proportionally within each of its fourteen segments. With the end of the war in sight, Fuller returned to the development of standardised, lightweight, cost-effective homes. No other plan for a model home has moved as far away from traditional architecture towards industrial design as the Dymaxion Dwelling Machine – or Wichita House – that he developed with the technologicallyadvanced Beech Aircraft Company of Wichita, Kansas. On presentation of the prototype of a full-size family dwelling weighing just four tonnes, Fuller Houses Inc. received thousands of orders, but Fuller insisted that the design needed perfecting before production could commence. The banks baulked at the delay and withdrew their support. A Wichita businessman bought the prototype, reassembled it on his own land and lived there with his six children for the rest of his life. In 1992 it was rescued by the Henry Ford Museum from a colony of raccoons. From 1948 onwards, Fuller taught at numerous colleges and universities. His teaching system was unacademic and, as a pioneer of project-based teaching, he often merged student exercises with his own research. Charismatic and enthusiastic, Fuller was an inspiring teacher and formed many friendships, particularly in the experimental atmosphere of Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he worked with the composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham and the artists and former Bauhaus teachers, Josef and Anni Albers. The collaboration of his teaching colleagues and the contributions of students like Kenneth Snelson, Don Richter and Shoji Sadao were crucial to Fuller’s work in the 1950s, notably in the development of his most successful project, the geodesic dome, the first large scale versions of which were built at Black Mountain College. Hailed at the time as the lightest, strongest and most cost-effective structure, the geodesic dome was designed to cover the maximum possible space without internal supports. The bigger it is, the lighter and stronger it becomes. The first full-size geodesic structure was completed – with a 49 feet diameter – in Montreal in 1950, the following year one was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1954 Fuller constructed two domes at the Milan Triennale exhibition made from six pieces of corrugated cardboard pre-cut in the US and folded into a small packing case for transport to Italy. Fuller’s hope was that such domes could one day be manufactured at the rate of 3,000 a day. By 1957 he had refined the design so that an enormous auditorium-sized geodesic dome was assembled in 22 hours in Honolulu. Hundreds of thousands of geodesic domes have since been constructed all over the world, often in extreme conditions, to offer inexpensive shelter to homeless families in Africa, or to house weather stations in 180 mph winds in the Antarctic. In 1960 Fuller designed a dome of two miles in diameter to encase midtown Manhattan in a controlled
climate. He calculated that it would pay for itself within ten years simply by saving on snow removal costs. The most imposing of his actual domes was the geodesic threequarter sphere – 61 metres high and 76 metres in diameter – that he designed with Sadao to house the US Pavilion at Montreal’s Expo ’67. A filigree network of steel rods was formed of an outer layer of triangular units and hexagonal units linked to an inner layer of hexagons. A skin of acrylic panels ensured total transparency apart from the occasional closure of triangular blinds programmed to react to very bright sunlight. It was a step toward Fuller’s ideal of a geodesic membrane as sensitive and adaptable as human skin. Alongside these practical projects, Fuller delved deeper and deeper into his own particular form of natural science. Self-taught, and with little respect for specialised academic research, he developed his own way of questioning the material world. In 1948 his search for “a geometry as nature uses it” led him to discover the mathematical formula for “the closest packing of spheres”, showing how spheres compact together symmetrically and tangentially. This led to Fuller’s exploration of what he called the “Jitterbug transformation” and into primary research in the field of quantum mechanics. It took some time for the natural sciences to catch up with the significance of such discoveries. In some cases recognition of the importance of Fuller’s scientific research came only after his death. By then he had registered 25 US patents, written 28 books, traveled around the globe 57 times and received 47 honourary doctorates as well as numerous other awards including a 1969 nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Het Huis Stoclet in Brussel - Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten Aalst

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