After World War II there a was a serious housing crisis in the USA, as thousands of young people returned home without much money or jobs and nowhere to live. It was also just after an industrial revolution where mass production techniques were refined to crank out vast volumes of planes, ships and weapons. Some designers, like Bucky Fuller, tried to apply those manufacturing technologies to the problem of housing.

On Houseplans blog Time To Build, Boyce Thompson looks at his Dymaxion House in some detail. It is an amazing and sad story; the house was actually a brilliant design.

© Henry Ford museum/ Interior, Wichita House

Time to build/ Houseplans.com/via

The entire house hung from a central mast, so foundations were minimal; then the house could be bolted together in a day. It could also be taken apart and moved if the owners relocated. Thompson describes it:

And why a round house?

Bucky explains in this video that we showed in a previous look at this house:

In between his wonderful photos of the one remaining Dymaxion House at the Henry Ford Museum, Thompson describes why then, as is now, there was a fascination with factory-built housing:

So why didn’t it catch on? Thompson lists a number of reasons, including lack of funds, Fuller’s stubbornness, internal squabbling. Thompson notes that “other developers got 1.2 million more conventional houses underway in 1946. Most of these homes – Cape Cods, Ranches, and Colonials – paid little attention to the social, environmental, and building issues addressed by the Dymaxion house. Tradition ultimately prevailed.”

Levittown/ New York Postcard Club/Public Domain

But considering that Thompson is writing for a Houseplans blog, I think it is interesting that he didn’t list the single most important reason: It is the land that matters. The mortgages that fund it. The infrastructure that supports it. The zoning bylaws that regulate it. That’s why the Levitts of the era succeeded and the Fullers didn’t, and why to this day the the tiny home, the modern green prefab home, and even the build your own from a Houseplans.com plan home are niche products, and why so little has changed in 70 years.