PARSONS AAS INTERIOR DESIGN - The New School

78
ID cONTEMPORARy ThEORy
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
SHIPPING CONTAINER
ARCHITECTURE
HOLLY MCWHORTER hollymcw@gmail.com
fAcULTy Emily Abruzzo
Shipping containers of one kind or
another have been in use since human
beings first began to transport goods
in bulk from one place to another.
Any strong container would do, from
a steamer trunk to a random wooden
crate, until the three primary modes
of long-distance transport—railroads,
trucks and oil tankers—came about,
each developing its own type of standardized
container. Transferring goods
from one type of transport vehicle to
another, however, was cumbersome,
with items having to be unpacked
from railroad cars before they could be
loaded onto a ships, for example, and
similarly unloaded piece by piece from
a ship before being loaded into a truck.
And containers for the trains, trucks
and boats of each different country had
different standard dimensions, making
international trade that much more
cumbersome. 1
In the mid 1950s, however, a truck
driver from North Carolina named
Malcolm McLean came up with the idea
of a single type of metal container that
would fit onto a truck trailer, train or
oil tanker, unopened, with equal ease. 2
He hired an engineer to devise a set of
standard dimensions and markings to
be used on all shipping containers internationally,
then proposed the idea to the
International Standards Organization.
They approved it in 1968, along with
structural features that would allow the
containers to fit together like Legos in
tall stacks, and large-scale global trade
was able to begin. 3
A standard ISO shipping container can
come with any number of special features
for specific uses, but the two standard
sizes are 8’x20’ and 8’x40’. Most
are 8’6” high, but 9’6” ones are not uncommon.
Many have built-in insulation
for transporting refrigerated goods, and
most have marine-grade plywood floors.
4 China manufactures and exports more
goods than any other country, 5 and everything
they export travels in shipping