"At Last–The Flivver House"

E. Lowenstein

"At Last–The Flivver House", 1941

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: gouache; watercolor; pencil; airbrushing

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 55.9 x 67.8 cm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 22 1/2 x 26 11/16 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 24 x 32 in

Credit line: Gift of Esquire, Inc.

Accession number: 1980.0836

Not on display

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Soundings

In the course of a Midwest road trip in November 1940, the visionary designer R. Buckminster Fuller was impressed by farmers’ circular metal grain bins used to store crops. These modest, functional structures provided the unlikely inspiration for Fuller’s invention of an inexpensive building of a similar type. Fuller named these structures Dymaxion Deployment Units (DDUs). Though originally intended for military use, the DDU was also promoted as an inexpensive house for up to four people; it cost only $1,250 and could be assembled in less than a day by anyone adept at playing with an Erector set. As one admirer exclaimed, “This house is to the low-priced shelter industry what the Model T Ford was to the automotive field.” Promoters also suggested other possible uses of the DDU, ranging from an artist’s studio to a hunting lodge, from a summer house to a “kiosk of pleasure.” DDUs were fabricated at the Butler Manufacturing Company in Kansas City, Missouri, where the first prototype came off the production line by April 1941. Over the next two years, 100 or more DDUs were made before wartime metal shortages halted production. Today the only known survivors of Fuller’s idealistic concept are at a decommissioned Army base in Wall Township, New Jersey. Nothing has yet been discovered about the artist who produced this idyllic portrait of a DDU that appeared in Esquire magazine in September 1941. CCE

Soundings

In the course of a Midwest road trip in November 1940, the visionary designer R. Buckminster Fuller was impressed by farmers’ circular metal grain bins used to store crops. These modest, functional structures provided the unlikely inspiration for Fuller’s invention of an inexpensive building of a similar type. Fuller named these structures Dymaxion Deployment Units (DDUs). Though originally intended for military use, the DDU was also promoted as an inexpensive house for up to four people; it cost only $1,250 and could be assembled in less than a day by anyone adept at playing with an Erector set. As one admirer exclaimed, “This house is to the low-priced shelter industry what the Model T Ford was to the automotive field.” Promoters also suggested other possible uses of the DDU, ranging from an artist’s studio to a hunting lodge, from a summer house to a “kiosk of pleasure.” DDUs were fabricated at the Butter Manufacturing Company in Kansas City, Missouri, where the first prototype came off the production line by April 1941. Over the next two years, 100 or more DDUs were made before wartime metal shortages halted production. Today the only known survivors of Fuller’s idealistic concept are at a decommissioned Army base in Wall Township, New Jersey. Nothing has yet been discovered about the artist who produced this idyllic portrait of a DDU that appeared in Esquire magazine in September 1941. CCE