HOMES BY WEIGHT.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19726, 17 September 1929, Page 2

HOMES BY WEIGHT.

LATEST AMERICAN NOTION. (l-EOM OUR OWN OORBBBPO.S-DENT.) SAN FRANCISCO, August 19. America's love of the bizarre has spread to the construction of humau dwellings and a sample of the real • state advertisements on the pages of newspapers around 1939 will chronicle something decidedly interesting, according to Mr Richard B. Fuller, of Chicago, who has a new idea in homebuilding, and he confidently believes one of the advertisements will run on the following lines: "Six-room house, constructed of best quality casein and duralumin, with 90-foot mast. Located 300 miles from city. Will sell for two shillings per pound." Mr Fuller has designed a house which dispenses with furnaces, wash-days, and the need of a large purse. It is floodproof, can stand up under a 1000mile gale, and will be sold by the pound. Here is how it happened. Mr Fuller, formerly in the building business, became dissatisfied with the style, time, and cost of house construction. Why, he argued, were houses always built of stone or wood, material used 5000 years ago, merely because they were close at hand? "In this age of achievement and invention it still takes from six months to a year to build a simple dwelling, inadequate at best," he says. "In less time than this squadrons of aeroplanes and destroyers and a million and a half autos are built." Seven years ago Mr Fuller applied himself to designing a house that could be factory-made at a small cost, and erected quickly. Bricks are not used in aeroplanes or ships, yet 'planes withstand wind speed up to 350 miles an hour, he reasoned, so why not use the same materials in building a house? A Strange House. Mr Fuller's strange house is constructed "light, taut, and strong after the manner of the aeroplane," with a central mast of duralumin tubes (an alloy of aluminium). From the top of the mast a six-sided structure is suspended above the earth by steel cables. The walls and windows are of double sheets of casein, made in transparent, opaque, or translucent form, with vacuums between to insulate the heat. The walls hold in the heat so that overflew of the lighting ana powergenerating system are capable of heating the whole house. The lights, centralised in the mast head, are transfused by mirrors and lenses throughout the rooms in any intensity or colour desired. The floors are of piano wire in spider-web formation, overlaid with an inflatable covering. The partitions are suspended and the floor pumped up to meet them and seal the edges. All the fitting is done by expansion, by inflating, rather than cutting to fit, with its attendant waste. In the grill is a gas range, ice-box, and dishwasher. All shelves are revolving like the seats of a ferris wheel, making it unnecessary to reach for them. A baspment washer will also be installed with a trapdoor opening, into which single pieces of linen can be thrown and automatically washed below. The beds are of rubber, and can be inflated to the desired hardness. The first floor is reached by a simple elevator in the mast. Underneath the overhanging house is a garage or hangar for an aeroplane. Rolling metal curtains form the floors. Fuller says the complete house will weigh, finished, about 6000 pounds, and can be sold at 50 cents a pound.