Dimaxion house
The Henry Ford
We went to the Henry Ford (that is the name for Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village now) last Saturday, as some of our family was in our old rust bucket industrial town for Thanksgiving. We took the kids, were not the only three generation group in the place.
My Dad used to teach in Dearborn, work at the museum summers. I have been witness to the evolution of the place. It now fancies itself as a museum of industry. I used to love to watch the craftspeople: glass blowers, potters, blacksmiths, weavers and textile makers, handcrafts of all sorts.
The hand crafts have been in decline. They have a grove of mulberry trees for the silk worms, but it doesn’t look used any more, they buy the silk worms. Textile demonstrators are not skilled crafts people, but docents who know little of the craft they are supposed to demonstrate.
They do not pay or give respect to glass blowers and blacksmiths. The craftspeople have gone elsewhere. The Henry Ford doesn’t mess with hand crafts anymore.
Their focus is now on the industrial revolution. Luddites must seek other education venues. The huge black coal burning train engines are still there. All sorts of buggies and early cars facinate the visitor. They have a GTO. (I loved this, began humming Beach Boys) There are presidential Lincolns and toy trains. There are interactive exhibits for making car chassis and airplanes so kids can spend time seeing what works.
Dimaxion House
One exhibit I have wanted to go to since they refurbished it was the Dimaxion house exhibit. They had a docent tour of it. R. Bucky Fuller designed the thing in 1929. He made two prototypes in 1949, made progress toward mass production during that time of extreme housing shortage.
The house itself was space efficent and energy efficent. There were storage inventions, closets and revolving shelves.
I did not know how water efficent the round house was before we went, was impressed. Rain water fell into a cistern below the house. The bathroom was one surface, small and cleanable. Bucky’s vision was such that it would very little time to clean the place.
Buckminister Fuller’s thinking came a long way to making a sustainable building, designed it in large part to be built in an airplane factory. I came away thinking how sad it was that the visionary and the bankers and the doers could not come together on this project. Many of the ideas were incorperated into later housing designs, not the most efficient ones. If we had been able to accomplish suburban exansion with anything approaching the low foot print of the Dimaxion House, we would be in better shape today.
I have a tender place in my heart for the visionary. The banker and industrialist are important too. We are at a flash point in history. I hope we can learn from this, would like to know more of the stories of ego clashing so we don’t repeat the failure of seeing and implementing useful technology. It’s gonna take a village to propel us into the 21st century. There is not a lot of space left, we are all in it together. When we leave the negotiation table, stop the negotiations, there is not where to go. Sticking your head in the sand will not be an option.
We went to the Henry Ford (that is the name for Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village now) last Saturday, as some of our family was in our old rust bucket industrial town for Thanksgiving. We took the kids, were not the only three generation group in the place.
My Dad used to teach in Dearborn, work at the museum summers. I have been witness to the evolution of the place. It now fancies itself as a museum of industry. I used to love to watch the craftspeople: glass blowers, potters, blacksmiths, weavers and textile makers, handcrafts of all sorts.
The hand crafts have been in decline. They have a grove of mulberry trees for the silk worms, but it doesn’t look used any more, they buy the silk worms. Textile demonstrators are not skilled crafts people, but docents who know little of the craft they are supposed to demonstrate.
They do not pay or give respect to glass blowers and blacksmiths. The craftspeople have gone elsewhere. The Henry Ford doesn’t mess with hand crafts anymore.
Their focus is now on the industrial revolution. Luddites must seek other education venues. The huge black coal burning train engines are still there. All sorts of buggies and early cars facinate the visitor. They have a GTO. (I loved this, began humming Beach Boys) There are presidential Lincolns and toy trains. There are interactive exhibits for making car chassis and airplanes so kids can spend time seeing what works.
Dimaxion House
One exhibit I have wanted to go to since they refurbished it was the Dimaxion house exhibit. They had a docent tour of it. R. Bucky Fuller designed the thing in 1929. He made two prototypes in 1949, made progress toward mass production during that time of extreme housing shortage.
The house itself was space efficent and energy efficent. There were storage inventions, closets and revolving shelves.
I did not know how water efficent the round house was before we went, was impressed. Rain water fell into a cistern below the house. The bathroom was one surface, small and cleanable. Bucky’s vision was such that it would very little time to clean the place.
Buckminister Fuller’s thinking came a long way to making a sustainable building, designed it in large part to be built in an airplane factory. I came away thinking how sad it was that the visionary and the bankers and the doers could not come together on this project. Many of the ideas were incorperated into later housing designs, not the most efficient ones. If we had been able to accomplish suburban exansion with anything approaching the low foot print of the Dimaxion House, we would be in better shape today.
I have a tender place in my heart for the visionary. The banker and industrialist are important too. We are at a flash point in history. I hope we can learn from this, would like to know more of the stories of ego clashing so we don’t repeat the failure of seeing and implementing useful technology. It’s gonna take a village to propel us into the 21st century. There is not a lot of space left, we are all in it together. When we leave the negotiation table, stop the negotiations, there is not where to go. Sticking your head in the sand will not be an option.
posted by Ridgewriters at 6:08 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home