pirate <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> lastly Buckminster Fuller trailer home   which I never saw but I saw drawings
> and meybe a photo but Im not sure  as I t was ....the 60's ......anyone know
> Fullers Mobile..Home...was it ever built????

the dymaxion was not a trailer... that's the one for which he's most noted...
as best as I can determine, fuller designed a portable home for republic
aircraft
in wichita, kansas... circa 1947
but it was more a component house, meant to be transported
in pieces to the homesite, and assembled -- it was a stressed-skin aluminum
panel design that was way high-tech, and pretty expensive...
only two were built...  and they can't really be called trailers
as they were in the same class as the lustron, apparently

but earlier, in the late 30's, an engineer named william stout  (ford trimotor
plane, scarab car, union pacific m-1000 streamlined power unit) designed the
stout portable house, and it was a trailer measuring about 8' wide by 18' long
by 6'6" high, that folded out into a cottage measuring 24' by 18' and could
be set up in 20 minutes onsite, by relatively unskilled persons...
and easily folded up and moved on its own integral chassis....
this is the design that was used by the gov during the Big War, as my dad called
it...
and for a lot of construction housing out west for the big dam projects....

and stout was heavily influenced by bucky fuller's and le corbusier's writings
and concepts about affordable housing and technology
but most of that was just writings and drawings, not actual units...

if I find out anything else, I'll let you know.... one of the architecture profs
at miami is a fuller nut    ;)
next time I see him I'll ask if he knows anything else about fuller's houses  ;)

deb


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