This radical-looking prefabricated house is one of the many types which have’ been submitted to the Division of Defense Housing Coordination as a quick, cheap method of housing defense workers. The house weighs only a ton, and can be constructed in six days by one man. At the right is an interior view of the novel “defense” house.
Dymaxion Deployment Units, "DDU's", created in 1940-41 and filed for patent in March of 1941, DDUs were first designed for British military use. Used by the American military after Pearl Harbor, they were loosely based on the construction principles first publicized by Fuller’s “Dymaxion house” in 1927. “Dymaxion” was a word coined by Fuller to express his principle of maximum function for minimum effort. The dymaxion house, based on this principle, was a pre-fabricated circular construction supported by a single central mast (Buckminster Fuller Institute 1995; Klotz 1988; Roth 1979). The DDUs had circular walls and a unique domed metal roof, with a ventilator at the central apex. This design had the specific purpose of creating a warm-air thermal outside the building, together with a corresponding cool air draft pulled groundward in the middle. The ventilator served to pull this downward draft of cooler air into the DDU. This natural air-conditioning was just one of the unique features of Fuller’s DDUs (Buckminster Fuller Institute 1995).” (Reed and Swanson 1996 Pg. 17, 19).
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