Fuller actually described the 10 deck houses shown here as "stepping stone, world airline maintenance crew environment controls", the idea being that, if appropriately distributed around the globe, they could serve as maintenance stations for planes on great circle air routes.

Fuller was convinced that his plan for mass-produced housing would render city-dwellings obsolete.

In July 1928, he wrote to his mother who was in their home in Bear Island, Maine, suggesting that the value of island property would be radically increased once his ideas took effect. He advised his mother to sell their house in Cambridge Massachussetts immediately, as the price of urban real estate was bound to fall dramatically:

"If the rest of the family want to keep their money in land, I should recommend transferring the money for the sale of the Cambridge property to the purchase of additional islands, picked for their landing facilities. In a year or so, when my 4D houses are ready, we will be able to put them up on the islands in one day, with every facility of modern city luxury built in, quite as comfortable in winter as any other time, on the installment plan, for a dollar down... There is no question that what I have predicted will come about."