Class project, Dymaxion Tent

Buckminster Fuller was a consummate interdisciplinary teacher. Famed as an architect, designer, writer, inventor, theorist, educator, and futurist, he taught at ID in the 1948–1949 academic year. While at ID he oversaw a class project relating to the development of a geodesic dome-type structure identified as a Dymaxion Tent. The project derived from observation of certain omni-directional dynamic phenomena, peculiar to the geometric form known as the dymaxion. It was immediately evident that these dynamic principles might eventually be applied in the construction of machinery for energy conservation, or pulsating or gyratory motion, that could be used in an autonomous dwelling, as reported in a summary of the project published in 1953.