The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think (Infrastructures)

Alexander Klose

ISBN 10: 0262028573 / ISBN 13: 9780262028578

Published by The MIT Press, London, 2009

About this Item

VINTAGESTAN BOOKS Title: The Container Principle by Alexander Klose Summary: We live in a world organized around the container. Standardized twenty- and forty-foot shipping containers carry material goods across oceans and over land; provide shelter, office space, and storage capacity; inspire films, novels, metaphors, and paradigms. Today, TEU (Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit, the official measurement for shipping containers) has become something like a global currency. A container ship, sailing under the flag of one country but owned by a corporation headquartered in another, carrying auto parts from Japan, frozen fish from Vietnam, and rubber ducks from China, offers a vivid representation of the increasing, world-is-flat globalisation of the international economy. In The Container Principle, Alexander Klose investigates the principle of the container and its effect on the way we live and think. Author: Alexander Klose Publisher: MIT Press. London Year Published: 2009 Edition: 1st Edition Dimensions: 20.5cm x 14cm Binding type: Hardcover ISBN: 9780262028578 Notes: SKU: VSS / 257 / G / 6685 / 5045 Condition Dust Jacket Condition: Very good. Handling marks Book condition: Very good. Sight twist to the book, handling marks Binding: Intact Pages: 194 pages.

Seller Inventory # 005045

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think (Infrastructures)
• Publisher: The MIT Press, London
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262028573
• ISBN 13: 9780262028578
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 0.7 kilograms
• Seller catalogs:
  • Maritime and Naval
  • Politics and Society
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

A cultural history of the shipping container as a crucible of globalization and a cultural paradigm.

We live in a world organized around the container. Standardized twenty- and forty-foot shipping containers carry material goods across oceans and over land; provide shelter, office space, and storage capacity; inspire films, novels, metaphors, and paradigms. Today, TEU (Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit, the official measurement for shipping containers) has become something like a global currency. A container ship, sailing under the flag of one country but owned by a corporation headquartered in another, carrying auto parts from Japan, frozen fish from Vietnam, and rubber ducks from China, offers a vivid representation of the increasing, world-is-flat globalization of the international economy. In The Container Principle, Alexander Klose investigates the principle of the container and its effect on the way we live and think.

Klose explores a series of “container situations” in their historical, political, and cultural contexts. He examines the container as a time capsule, sometimes breaking loose and washing up onshore to display an inventory of artifacts of our culture. He explains the “Matryoshka principle,” explores the history of land-water transport, and charts the three phases of container history. He examines the rise of logistics, the containerization of computing in the form of modularization and standardization, the architecture of container-like housing (citing both Le Corbusier and Malvina Reynolds's “Little Boxes”), and a range of artistic projects inspired by containers. Containerization, spreading from physical storage to organizational metaphors, Klose argues, signals a change in the fundamental order of thinking and things. It has become a principle.

About the Author

Alexander Klose is a researcher and curator in the program department of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.