Sat 6 May 2006
Via BoingBoing, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Shipping Container.
“By dramatically lowering freight costs, the container transformed economic geography. Some of the world’s great ports saw their bustling waterfronts decay as the maritime industry decamped to new locations. Production moved much farther afield, which took advantage of cheap, reliable transportation to make goods that could not have been exported profitably before containerisation.”
There is a growing movement of innovators active in transforming the common shipping cargo containers into dwellings, studios, shops, and live/work spaces. A design/archetecture collective has sprung up in Seattle, made up of architects Robert Humble and Joel Egan. www.Cargotecture.com
Although, in raw form, containers are dark windowless boxes (which might place them at odds with some of the tenets of modernist design…) they can be highly customizable modular elements of a larger structure. www.FabPreFab.com
To read more about Cargotecture click here…..
