The Ultimate Dwelling Machine

For architecture fans who fancy their modernism in the round, the only surviving prototype of R. Buckminster Fuller’s innovative Dymaxion House will soon be on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. The 3-ton aluminum structure was conceived in the late 1920s and built in 1946, when it was unveiled as an affordable, tornado-resistant housing option for GIs returning from WWII, to be built by Beechcraft employees in Wichita, Kan. Despite its stylish space-age exterior and the surprisingly spacious, roughly 1,100-square-foot interior--with two bedrooms, two baths and living/dining room--the house was never mass-produced. (Two were built; the museum created its prototype from those homes.) The exhibit, which opens Oct. 27, will transport visitors to postwar Wichita with radio broadcasts, songs and graphics from the era. Guests will tour the 36-foot-diameter house like potential buyers, while guides masquerading as real estate agents point out features such as the revolving closets, the modern kitchen unit, mechanized shelves and sliding walls and doors. The Jetsons would be right at home.

The Dymaxion House: A New Way of Living, at the Henry Ford Museum, 20900 Oakwood Blvd., Dearborn; (313) 271-1620, www.hfmgv.org. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m daily. Admission is $7.50 to $12.50.