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.
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).
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
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.
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).
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
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
A unique exploration of the design, material history and hidden lives of an object that is central to the development of our consumer society.
Craig Martin is Senior Lecturer in Design Cultures at The University of Edinburgh, UK. He is the co-editor, with J. Rugg, of Spatialities: The Geographies of Art & Architecture (2011).
Craig Martin has brought real love and insight to the logistical
life of the shipping container. He reveals its role in the
distributive space of extensive global networks and other dark
places and their knotty politics, without ever losing track of our
personal attachment and alienation to this box of ubiquity, this
vessel of choreographed capitalism. Shipping Container is an
efficient little package, calculating, brisk, economical, and yet,
it is anything but a standardized account; it just sings.
*Peter Adey, Professor of Human Geography, Royal Holloway,
University of London, UK*
Object Lessons’ describes themselves as ‘short, beautiful books,’
and to that, I'll say, amen. … [I]t is in this simplicity that we
find insight and even beauty. Shipping Container by Craig Martin
asks us to contemplate an object on which we depend to move 90
percent of what goes from point A to points B through Z on the
globe, but also with which very few of us have had direct contact.
If you read enough ‘Object Lessons’ books, you'll fill your head
with plenty of trivia to amaze and annoy your friends and loved
ones — caution recommended on pontificating on the objects
surrounding you. More importantly, though, in the tradition of
McPhee's Oranges, they inspire us to take a second look at parts of
the everyday that we've taken for granted. These are not so much
lessons about the objects themselves, but opportunities for
self-reflection and storytelling. They remind us that we are
surrounded by a wondrous world, as long as we care to look.
*Chicago Tribune*
Shipping Container discusses in detail the mechanics of this
object. It broadens this out to reflect on the significance of
design and the efficiencies of standardization. Verdict: Borrow.
Shipping Container is impressive in the way it manages to spin an
apparently dull object into intelligent and interesting
explanations of design and commerce.
*Book Riot*
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