Synopses & Reviews
Ever wondered what's in those large metal boxes you drive past on the motorway? Ever considered where the parts of the car you're driving come from, and how they got to the factory? Inevitably it involved being boxed-up in a shipping container. 90% of the goods and materials that move around the globe do so in shipping containers, which make them a central player in our consumer society, changing the look and feel of the towns and cities we live in. This book unearths the importance of the apparently mundane shipping container in shaping the world around us.
It argues that the container plays an important role beyond its original, intended function, both in illicit ways through drug smuggling and people trafficking, and also in a variety of architectural and design contexts. This is reflected in the book's approach, which is framed by the various political, economic, social contexts where the container has featured, as well as its influence in popular culture, from TV shows such as The Wire to the lyrics of Fall songs.
Synopsis
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
The shipping container is all around: whizzing by on the highway, trundling past on rails, unloading behind a big box store even as you shop there, clanking on the docks just out of sight.... 90% of the goods and materials that move around the globe do so in shipping containers. It is an absolutely ubiquitous object, even if most of us have no direct contact with it. But what is this thing? Where has it been, and where is it going? Craig Martin's book illuminates the "development of containerization"--including design history, standardization, aesthetics, and a surprising speculative discussion of the futurity of shipping containers.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
About the Author
Craig Martin is Senior Lecturer in the Edinburgh College of Art at The University of Edinburgh, UK. He is the co-editor, with J. Rugg, of Spatialities: The Geographies of Art & Architecture (2011).
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Packaging Stuff
2. 20 x 40 x 8 feet: Design and Development of a Global Object
3. Twist Lock: Global Object of Capitalism
4. Breaking the Seal: Illicit Lives of the Container
5. Four Walls: Container Afterlives:
6. Conclusion: Global Object to Come
Index