I'm sure that you more about this guy than I do, but I saw a thing on TV about him once, and it was interesting. Maybe I'll look him up on Wiki over the weekend. I think it was before he invented the geodesic dome that he tried to persuade people that round buildings made more sense than square or rectangular ones. He was looking for a way to make housing more affordable, and also more efficient. I remember there must have been one of his fans along old U.S. Highway 12, which is how we got to Grandma's house in Stevensville, Michigan before they built I-94. We knew we were close to Grandma's when we passed this set of round buildings by the side of the road. There was a house, a garage, and another building that looked like it might have been a chicken coop. They were all round and painted white, and were built out of some kind of masonry, maybe concrete. At some point the owner must have died or moved away because the buildings appeared to be abandoned and falling into disrepair, but I seem to remember that they had looked occupied and well kept for years before that. I think the complex was eventually demolished to make room for I-94.
Geodesic domes are mostly used for large public buildings, but I remember seeing at least one that was a private home. I don't remember its exact location, but it was likely in northern Emmet County, which borders Cheboygan County on the west. I think my hypothetical wife and I were searching for a lost hound dog, we used to run bear dogs in that area back in the 1970s. For some reason, we thought that the dog might have come by that way, so we knocked on the door and asked the occupants of this funny looking house if they had seen it. They were a young couple, about our ages. They hadn't seen the dog, but they were real friendly and showed us around the house, which they had recently built themselves. It was all made out of equilateral wooden triangles, maybe 18 inches to the side. I don't remember what they did about doors and windows, but they must have custom fabricated them to fit the rest of the house. The couple was all excited about their creation, believing that they were on the cutting edge of a tend that would soon sweep the world and make traditional buildings obsolete. The TV show we saw about it decades later said that most of Bucky Fuller's disciples were like that, displaying enthusiasm that bordered on the religious.
So why, after all these years, are most of us still living in houses with square corners? I remember when Marina City was first built, people were saying that all new buildings would look like that before long, but buildings like yours and those domes have remained landmark curiosities even unto this day. Why do you suppose that is? The TV show said that some of Bucky's creations still stand, and the owners really love them and wouldn't want to live anywhere else. I noticed, though, that when an addition has been build on any of those buildings, it's usually square. If the owners like to live in the round so much, why didn't they make the additions consistent with the original structure? There is the thing about the doors and windows. Most builders today don't make their doors and windows from scratch, they buy prefabricated ones. Still, if there was a demand for curved doors and windows, I'm sure that some enterprising company would make them. There is an old house in Cheboygan that has some curved windows, but I'm sure they were custom made because this house dates back to the 19th Century, long before they came out with prefabricated windows. The house is made of brick, and it has a couple of round towers on the corners, which is where the curved windows are. It's certainly not low income housing, it was originally built for some lumber baron and, last I heard, a judge was living in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment