DYMAXION
The failure of the Dymaxion was definitive proof that architects should not interfere with conventional automotive design.
Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was a self-appointed architect, highly original thinker and compelling speaker who was committed to arguing his personally imagined ‘rational’ future into being, sometimes in four-hour lectures.
Part of this vision included new industrial system-built houses for which he coined the name ‘Dymaxion’, a term that feels at once beckoning, scientific and indecipherable.
Of course, the inhabitants of these new living units were to have a flying car and, accordingly, the first #Dymaxion car design shows stubby inflatable wings. As built, the car was wingless but was intended to raise its tail and ‘plane’ on two front wheels – a tendency that made it hard to control at speed; the rearwheel
steering made it difficult to control when going slow, too!
A short clip from "the world of buckminster fuller" (1971)
a fatal crash
At a time when mainstream automakers were experimenting with both rear engines and rear-wheel drives or front engines plus front-wheel drive, the Dymaxion bucked all the trends by having, uniquely, a rear engine and front rear-wheel drive. Unfortunately, the prototype was involved in a fatal accident at the 1933 Chicago World Exposition, though this may not have been connected with
the unconventional aspects of the design.
The car should perhaps be regarded more as a piece of Modernist polemics than as a practical vehicle. Together with the weird body design devised by Walter Gropius for Adler, the Dymaxion proved for ever that architects should not meddle with automotive design.
By http://www.flickr.com/photos/saschapohflepp/ [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
did you know?
The fatal accident the Dymaxion was involved in in 1933 occurred when another car struck it at the Chicago Century of Progress World's Fair.
Upon impact, the Dymaxion rolled over, killing the driver, American racer Francis T. Turner.
Turner was wearing a seat belt but died after the vehicle's canvas-covered roof framing collapsed on top of him.
A formal investigation found that the unusual shape of the Dymaxion was not to blame for Turner's death.
Some text taken from 50 Cars that Changed the World published by Conran Octopus with permission.
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