A link from Twitter this morning to these photos of the now-demolished Taoho Design Office and Studio appealed to my interest in shipping containers, which will be well-known to readers of this blog. The ur-text is of course Marc Levinson’s [amazon_link id=”0691136408″ target=”_blank” ]The Box[/amazon_link], published in 2007, but selected by Bill Gates as one of the best books he read in 2013.
[amazon_image id=”0691136408″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger[/amazon_image]
Parenthetically, I thought the whole list was terrific – I quite enjoyed William Rosen’s [amazon_link id=”1845951352″ target=”_blank” ]The Most Powerful Idea in the World[/amazon_link]. I’ve not read the others but they all sound interesting. I have read some papers preceding Morten Jerven’s [amazon_link id=”080147860X” target=”_blank” ]Poor Numbers[/amazon_link], although the book wasn’t out in time before I finished writing [amazon_link id=”0691156794″ target=”_blank” ]GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History[/amazon_link]. It’s interesting – and encouraging – to see new interest in what the aim is in measuring ‘the economy’. It must be a good thing if the wider world is getting interested in shipping containers and statistics.
[amazon_image id=”1845951352″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention[/amazon_image]
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urbanphoto_blog Ahead of its time: HK architect Tao Ho built eco-friendly office from shipping containers… in 1989 http://t.co/pFufIZWwdy 10/01/2014 02:56 |
Around forty and more years ago I went out of Hull and later Felixstowe via Europort by Rotterdam and suddenly became aware that shipping, dock work and related transport was in the process of radical change. Also that it was going to change other things. What I and so many others did not realise was that container shipping was going to change the world economy.