Find an event
Dome improvement
The MCA showcases Buckminster Fuller's prefab(ulous) designs.
Buckminster Fuller was in Chicago, standing on the shore of Lake Michigan, when he decided not to kill himself. At least that’s what he told people decades after 1927—the year professional failure and the death of his three-year-old daughter drove him to despair.
“Whether or not [that story] is true, it divides his life,” says Tricia Van Eck, curatorial coordinator and curator of artists’ books at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Van Eck assembled eight cases of photographs, letters and archival documents relating to Fuller’s work in the Chicago area for the MCA’s presentation of “Starting with the Universe.” The Fuller retrospective originated at New York’s Whitney Museum and runs through June 21.
It’s impossible to classify Fuller (1895–1983) as an architect, an inventor, a philosopher or an environmentalist. He took on all of these roles in trying to answer two of our own era’s most pressing questions: How can every human being have adequate shelter—and how can society meet people’s basic needs with as few resources as possible? Fuller rejected suicide, Van Eck explains, because he concluded that “you belong to the world and you should see what an ordinary individual can do to help mankind.”
The New England native moved to Chicago to work for his father-in-law. While he lived here from 1926–29, he developed an idea for a mass-produced, prefabricated house light enough to be delivered by airplane—a concept that contemporary architects have not yet mastered. Marshall Field’s department store invited him to display a prototype of the so-called Dymaxion House, hoping, according to Fuller, that it would help sell an overstock of modernist furniture. (Marshall Field’s marketing staff named the futuristic round aluminum house, combining the terms dynamic, maximum and ion.)
The house’s commercial failure didn’t discourage Fuller from developing a Dymaxion Car (pictured), which he presented at Chicago’s Century of Progress world’s fair in 1933. Van Eck tells us the three-wheeled vehicle could hold 11 passengers, got 30 miles per gallon, could go 120 miles per hour and “was supereasy to park.” But it was involved in a fatal accident at the fair that helped seal its doom.
Fuller himself had stabilized, however, thanks to a string of teaching gigs at colleges and universities. The MCA covers one exhibition wall with a charming photograph of Fuller and students from Chicago’s Institute of Design, where he taught in the fall of 1948, all of them dangling from the first model of his geodesic dome.
Fuller’s concerns about shelter and doing more with fewer materials are what shaped the geodesic dome, which became his most successful project. With a frame composed of self-bracing triangles, the dome requires no internal supports; it can be assembled quickly, and it’s earthquake- and storm-resistant, making it ideal for emergency shelter. More than 300,000 have been built around the world as temporary and permanent dwellings, military installations, commercial buildings and playground equipment. Fuller built a dome home for himself at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where he taught from 1959–72.
“Starting with the Universe” includes several models of Fuller’s domes, and studies and prototypes for most of his other iconic innovations. The MCA has scheduled several lectures this spring in conjunction with the show; the speakers include artists, architects, designers and activists, reflecting Fuller’s own “comprehensivist” approach to life. “Fuller hated specialization,” Van Eck says. “The universe doesn’t specialize; it does everything. He thought that when we become specialized, then we stop paying attention to the world.” This seems like a good time to pay attention to Fuller.
“Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe” opens Saturday 14 at the MCA.
