Fuller Houses, Inc.
Fuller Houses, Inc., the company formed to put the Dymaxion dwelling into production in Wichita, Kansas, with Beech Aircraft as its manufacturing partner.
The company issued 15,500 shares — roughly 9,000 to the public and officers, and 1,000 to Beech — with Fuller retaining veto power through special Class B shares. That structure mattered: it let him keep design control of a venture he had raised outside capital to build.
Fuller signed a two-year research contract with Beech Aircraft, which held an abundance of aluminium in the aftermath of the Second World War. Two prototypes were completed in 1946 — the Barwise and the Danbury — but neither was assembled as a production house, and the company never reached manufacture.
Role in Fuller's world
Fuller Houses, Inc. is the closest Fuller's housing work came to industrial production, and the clearest case study in why it stopped short. The share structure records his insistence on control; the two unassembled prototypes record the gap between a financed prototype and a factory-made dwelling.
See Also
- Beech Aircraft — manufacturing partner and shareholder
- Wichita House — the dwelling this company existed to produce
Sources
- Fuller inventions — Chronofile, bathroom, Wichita — the share structure and Beech's stake
- Architecture Classics: The Dymaxion House — the Beech research contract and the Barwise and Danbury prototypes