{"id":5931,"date":"2013-05-22T06:22:06","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T11:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/?p=5931"},"modified":"2013-05-22T06:23:45","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T11:23:45","slug":"starling-burgess-buckminster-fuller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/?p=5931","title":{"rendered":"STARLING BURGESS AND BUCKMINSTER FULLER"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dymaxion blueprints discovered in attic going up for auction<\/a><\/h1>\n
Daniel Strohl<\/a>\u00a0May 20th, 2013 at 8am \u00a0 | \u00a0\u00a024 comments<\/a>\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
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\"Dymaxion_01_1500\"<\/a>
\nPhotos courtesy Wright Auctions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Long hidden away in a New England attic, a set of blueprints for the futuristic Dymaxion automobile \u2013 allegedly the only privately held Dymaxion artifacts \u2013 are now seeing the light of day as they head to auction next month.<\/p>\n

Collected in a three-ring binder, the set of 18 blueprints all appear to date to 1933 and cover chassis details, metal specifications, and wiring diagrams for the first and second Dymaxion cars, which Buckminster Fuller and Starling Burgess designed and built in the old Locomobile factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The blueprints turned up only recently in the attic of a house in Dudley, Massachusetts; the discoverer then donated the blueprints to filmmaker Noel Murphy, who will use the proceeds from the sale to help finish his documentary on the Dymaxion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know exactly how the blueprints got to that attic, but we can put two and two together,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cWhen\u00a0Nannie Dale Biddle<\/del>\u00a0Else Foss (a financial backer of the 4D Company, which produced the Dymaxion) ended up with controlling interest in the company, Buckminster Fuller hid Dymaxions No. 2 and 3 at\u00a0Waterhouse<\/a>\u00a0in Webster, Massachusetts. So the best I can figure is that when he hid the cars, he lived in a rooming house near there, and Dudley is just one town over from Webster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dymaxion_03_1500\"<\/a>\u00a0\"Dymaxion_02_1500\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Murphy, the blueprints going up for auction are the only known set of original Dymaxion blueprints outside of\u00a0Stanford University\u2019s Dymaxion Chronofile archives<\/a>, which includes the complementing body blueprints for Dymaxion No. 1. \u201cNothing [original related to the Dymaxion automobile] is in private hands,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cWe spent plenty of time and a lot of searching looking for other Dymaxion materials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuller envisioned the Dymaxion automobile \u2013 a front-wheel-drive Ford flathead-powered rear-engine three-wheeler with rear-wheel steering and a teardrop-shaped body \u2013 as part of an overall philosophy that combined urban planning, architecture, and social criticism. He enlisted yacht builder Starling Burgess to design the unique vehicle and built three Dymaxions in total: The first became involved in the\u00a0infamous fatal accident<\/a>\u00a0in Chicago, then later became a productmobile for a while before being destroyed by a fire; the second, the only Dymaxion extant, today\u00a0resides in the National Automobile Museum<\/a>\u00a0in Reno, Nevada; and the third was reportedly scrapped during the Korean War in Wichita, Kansas. Crosthwaite and Gardiner recently completed a re-creation of Dymaxion No. 3 for British architect Lord Norman Foster, and Jeff Lane of the Lane Motor Museum has\u00a0embarked on his own Dymaxion re-creation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Murphy said that his film,\u00a0The Last Dymaxion: Buckminster Fuller\u2019s Dream Restored<\/em><\/a>, should be finished in the fall.<\/p>\n

The blueprints, which will appear in the Wright Auctions Important Design sale June 6 in Chicago, are estimated to sell for $20,000 to $30,000. For more information, visit\u00a0Wright20.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two people I have always found most interesting, Starling Burgess was a complicated man, who in my opinion has never been recognized adequately for his genius. His drawings, at Mystic Seaport are marvels. I attended several lectures by Buckminster Fuller when I was young.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dymaxion blueprints discovered in attic going up for auction Daniel Strohl\u00a0May 20th, 2013 at 8am \u00a0 | \u00a0\u00a024 comments\u00a0 Photos courtesy Wright Auctions. Long hidden away in a New England attic, a set of blueprints for the futuristic Dymaxion automobile \u2013 allegedly the only privately held Dymaxion artifacts \u2013 are now seeing the light of … Continue reading STARLING BURGESS AND BUCKMINSTER FULLER<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1647],"tags":[1646],"class_list":["post-5931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-starling-burgess","tag-dymaxion-automobile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5931"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5933,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931\/revisions\/5933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}