Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Dymaxion


http://www.hfmgv.org/dymaxion/I met R. Buckminster Fuller shortly sometime his passing at an MIT confab. Imagine building housing the way Toyota builds cars today rather tham the way Daimler built cars in 1897.

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

First !

Anonymous said...

Oh...and MURST !

Sorry The Dude

Sprezzatura said...

Thirst?

Anonymous said...

And architects would go the way of coachbuilders

Unknown said...

damn. i go to grab some dinner and get 6th

Anonymous said...

Rounded walls, windows, doors....yeah right.

Sounds like some sweet real estate properties that are easy and cheap in upkeep. Just go to Home Depot and pick up some radius 200 doors.....


Reminds me of the house we went to see a week ago. Lakefront property, two story house, and NO windows with view on the second floor! Windows where 10' high making them useless for any view. (House build in '87) Whoever architected this place was an utter moron.

They wanted ~100K over what this thing is worth.....

Anonymous said...

Sweet Cashback has it right. Homes are designed partly to meet the needs of the occupants, and partly to match the location. You're not going to be able to come up with one design (or even a small handful) that fit all locations in terms of view, orientation, expected weather conditions, lot size, slope, and so on.

Anonymous said...

Here's another interesting house-prefab idea. Fully custom prefab. A design is built on a computer, which custom-cuts lumbar with holes and joints.

At the site, metal connectors are inserted into the pre-cut holes and slots and the house is erected. They claim 24 hours to frame and seal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY6ujuDexzI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuEIzBhbuNw

It looks interesting.

Kerriella said...

Dang it! I leave to watch American Idol with my daughter and you start a new post! I think I have only gotten first 3 times! Oh well, I would hate to be Dude right now, missing first AND not getting house congrats? **shakes head** Poor Dude. LOL

Anonymous said...

I remember doing a harvard b-school case on Toyota's kaizen process in one of my b-school classes. Yes, my graduate minor is financial engineering.

Biggest difference was this: Toyota's approach required educated, motivated people on the assembly line willing to pay attention to detail and/or provide suggestions to improve the process. This requires a combination of job security and decent compensation to maintain high morale.

Now, consider housing. Illegal aliens from the Home Depot parking lot don't quite fit the description above. They are used because they are cheap and expendable. Same reason factories are in China and call-centers and programming jobs are moving to India.

American execs focus on the anal-rententive cost tracking of kaizen (or the Western bastardization of it called LEAN or Six-sigma), but totally miss the employee morale component. A demoralized employee being paid peanuts isn't going to pay attention to detail.

Rob Dawg said...

Home Depot casual day labor has done more to undermine American preminence than any other factor. Strawberry picking is not a pull" industry. 20 years ago strawberries would have been automated were it not for the pressure of millions of available manhours of cheap labor.

Rob Dawg said...

harvard b-school

Okay, confession. I "dated" several BSchoolers. "Dated" of course being a euphuism for a supposedly mutually benefical exchange of bodily fluids. Would have been fine except for the parting comments where she would often thank me for the mutually beneficial exchange of bodily fluids.

Lost Cause said...

Corporate built mass produced housing is not enough for you?

Anonymous said...

Never liked Bucky.

Frank Lloyd Wright Rocks.

Read any of FLW books - "A Testament" is my favorite.

Anonymous said...

Who remembers the Nick show Roundhouse back in the early 90s? BEst opening song ever!

Whenever my lifge gets me so down/i know i can go down/down to the place where the fun never ends/

Anonymous said...

I am StrawberryBot. You guys in the US need to deport all people there illegally and BUY MORE STRAWBERRYBOTS to you pick your crops!!!

*We* do not eat the strawberries and e-coli contanimation is at a minimum.

Unknown said...

dawg,
I don't believe there could be an automated way to pick strawberries even now. They tend to be near the ground. Most automated pickers these days are for stuff that grows up off the ground a fair bit. just my .02

You still need manual labor for a good bit of the the vegetable and fruit crops. automating would destroy the plant itself. Now if you believe that they would by now have a system where it recognized the fruit, grabbed it and put it into the hopper...well that is ALOT of moving parts.

Anonymous said...

Good day,

I have given this subject some consideration in the past. Your readers may be interested in this gathering place about modern prefabricated dwellings

In your service,
I L M S

Anonymous said...

Wasn't he on the Jamaican Bobsled team?

Anonymous said...

AP:

5/1/07 5:30pm- Salt Lake City, Utah:

Mortgage guru and noted Olympic Pin Salesman, Nigel F. Swaby, announced his latest blog ventures in a press conference held in the VIP room of a mormon temple late Tuesday afternoon.

"I am very pleased to present my latest award winning series of blogs. My initial offering will be entitled "SLCautomotiveliving.blogspot.com" this comprehensive resource site will offer a wide variety of discussion, advice and references for those who have chose to make the leap into the white hot market of in-car living." Swaby stated.

Swaby, clad in a faux leather jacket and smelling strongly of Axe body spray went on to say, "The successfull launch of SLCAL will be followed by my other new blog offerings: SLCdon'thatecaseyforlivinginhiscar.blogspot.com and damnyourobertcote.blogspot.com."

Asked by a reporters how he continually came up with fresh new blogs to satisfy the demand of his fan, Nigel replied; "I don't really know. The ideas just kind of come to me. It's kind of Magical. You guys see my Beemer? It's parked right outside."

The meeting was brought to an abrupt end when a handful of Jamacians began to direct threats at the blog mogul, apparently upset with investment advice they recieved from him. Witnesses reported hearing the mob chanting "No Swaby, No Lie" before Swaby was wisked away in a used BMW.

The Dude said...

As Swaby was whisked away by his entourage, reporters inquired:

"Do you have a pond with fish and stuff?"

"How many unique visitors do you have on your award winning blog?"

....the world awaits the answers

Anonymous said...

Anya Peters will be Casey's prison name! He has been blessed!

Lou Minatti said...

Hey, I just realized the perfect opportunity for Casey: He should join the French Foreign Legion.

"The Legion's ranks historically were filled with enlistees from countries which were undergoing some sort of crisis. While no serious studies were made of the motives for enlistment it seems likely that many recruits were simply transient foreigners who found themselves in France and out of work. In recent generations, however, many of those joining have come from middle-class backgrounds in stable prosperous countries such as Britain and the US."

"Legionnaires can choose to enlist under a pseudonym ("declared identity") and a declared citizenship. This disposition exists in order to allow people who want to start their lives over to enlist."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Foreign_Legion

Anonymous said...

@Lou

Say what you like about the French but they do still have some standards, there's no way in hell they'd want snowflake running around with a French passport after his tour - not to mention the rest of the EU. Nope, he's your damn problem and you guys can deal with him :)

Preferably in gitmo.

Or one of your illegal CIA torture centres maybe. But given the total lack of police interest in his many, many self documented crimes i don't suppose he will ever get his comuppance. Would the last one to leave the country please remember to turn off the light.

Anonymous said...

Project SCOBY Doo update above.

Rob Dawg said...

Akubi, every time I click I keep hoping you'll climb out of that darned pool. You go.

Anonymous said...

It's 11PM EST. Casey said "watch for an announcement tomorrow". Tomorrow is almost over.

Rob Dawg said...

Anon, I promised Forums 3 plus weeks ago, differnce being I am just late not lying.

Akubi said...

Rob Dawg,
A pool (and I happen to have the BIGGEST POOL in the entire Blogosphere) is better than a murse, isn't it?
BTW, why haven't you added Stephanie J's award to the right panel of your blog?

Rob Dawg said...

Aku,
already on the left panel of the new blog. get this; a single click for linear OR nested comments in the blog section.

Anonymous said...

You want to know what I really like about this post? It's the apex of the ExUrban Nation.

In the future, a buyer will no longer pass on a property because the carpet is "too beigey". Instead, a buyer will buy on how many square meters of space they need factored in with how many square meters they can afford.

The kids at Dwell have been drooling over this group hug for a while. Life won't be how many sticks with granite countertops can we put up, but how many panels can you configure? We build the knobby pads, you bring the lego brick.

This semi-rant brought to you by Murphy's Irish Stout.


-jbjbj

Anonymous said...

@ Rob

"Okay, confession. I "dated" several BSchoolers. "Dated" of course being a euphuism for a supposedly mutually benefical exchange of bodily fluids. Would have been fine except for the parting comments where she would often thank me for the mutually beneficial exchange of bodily fluids."

Now this is why I hate actually knowing what an internet poster looks like (thank you Cornflake). If I didn't know what Rob looked like, this comment would be funny. Instead, with some idea of what he actually looks like, I just find that little anecdote creepy...

Anonymous said...

Come to think of it, I have never laid an MBA.

And only two lawyers.

Scratch that, only one MBA. She seemed reasonably well-adjusted although she had a disturbing thing for Americans. (She got her MBA in the US, although she was not an American.)

She was disappointed that I could not lead her to some undiscovered American colony.