Fuller's Fancy

It didn't look much like a house. It looked more like a big inverted top. When Wichita's Fuller Houses, Inc. unwrapped its new circular house this week, house-hungry U.S. citizens got an eyeful.

Those who remembered Designer Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion-Dwelling Machine" of 19 years ago could see basic similarities in his latest product. A 36-foot round aluminum shell was suspended on a central stainless steel mast, firmly anchored and capped by a rudderlike ventilator, which turns with the wind. Inside, the house was unexpectedly spacious: two bedrooms,, two baths, a large living room with fireplace, kitchen and some built-in furniture. A heating and air-conditioning unit, operated by either gas or electricity, was neatly stowed away in the innards, along with most of the plumbing. (Bucky Fuller had temporarily abandoned the idea of heating with sewage.)

Unlike other prefabricated houses, the Fuller unit can be made with mass production materials and techniques, notably those of the aircraft industry. Beech Aircraft Corp., the only licensee so far, is now tooling up for production. It expects to be making 200 houses a day by next January. Bucky Fuller, whose company is only a sales organization, plans to license other planemakers, hopes eventually to roll houses off production lines at the rate of 185,000 a year. Washington housing officials have said that the house, turned out in idle plants, is probably the best answer yet to the housing shortage. In fact, in its April "housing" issue, FORTUNE gave it more than an even chance of revolutionizing the industry.

One of the prime attractions of the Fuller house is its low price: not over $6,500 delivered. It is so light--only about three tons as compared with anywhere from 45 to 140 tons for an orthodox house, that it can be shipped from Wichita to any point in the U.S. for less than $100. Its biggest drawback is the drawback of all such houses: building codes automatically bar them in most cities. Bucky Fuller's house has one more drawback. It stands out like a fat thumb among conventional houses.

* A hybrid of favorite Fuller words "dynamic" and "maximize," now abandoned as too forbidding.

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