The Many Faces of Shipping Containers

The mere fact that these oftentimes nondescript boxes - in some circles lauded as the poster children of globalization -  can simultaneously embody such diametrically opposed realities is staggering. A few words that quickly come to mind are: innovation, simplicity, decadence, desperation, corruption, survival, adaptation.....

With the advent of viable shipping containers in the 1950's, global trade was revolutionized in one fell swoop. In his book, "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy," Marc Levinson discusses the impact the container has had upon the modern economy.

Both licit and illicit markets have flourished through the ease with which shipping containers traverse the seas.

....art installation "Journey" depicts the shadow economy that is human trafficking on the side of a shipping container, which serves as one of the many vessels employed to traffic and smuggle human beings across borders.

Worker housing, shipping containers, Dubai.

While statistics regarding transnational organized crime are speculative at best, the UNODC estimates that "less than 2% of the 420 million shipping containers used globally every year are inspected, creating major opportunities for drug traffickers and smugglers to conceal illicit cargo." If these numbers are even remotely close to being realistic imagine the resulting implications. Being floored would be a natural response.

Home made of shipping containers outside of Kabul, Afghanistan. The occupants are workers who 'cast blast-wall sections' in concrete. Copyright: Simon Norfolk. Burke + Norfolk: Photographs from the War in Afghanistan (show at the Tate's Level 2 Gallery).

Operation Smoking Dragon / Operation Royal Charm: a recent take down of an international smuggling ring stretching from China and Taiwan to Canada and the U.S. - contraband included counterfeit cigarettes, counterfeit pharmaceuticals (viagra), methamphetamine, counterfeit $100 bills, and Chinese military-grade weapons (QW-2 surface-to-air missiles).
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/july/dragon_07051

House made of shipping containers that I spotted in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona.

Central Gaza Strip, Nusseirat refugee camp's 'primary school' located in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) containers. 06/21/10.

Shipping container temporary relief housing prototype for Haiti post-earthquake disaster. A Shipping Container Housing Project. 02/10.

August 1, 2011 - Maersk Line flexes their corporate social responsibility muscle by partnering with the World Food Program to address the food scarcity situation of refugees from the Ivory Coast.

Four containers have been deployed by Maersk to Liberia, they have been painted in the United Nations World Food Program colors and are serving as mobile warehouses in Bahn refugee camp (located approximately 50 km from the Liberia - Ivory Coast Border).


“Our company can play a key role during crises and disasters, where transport and the lack of logistics is often a challenge,” says Lise Damkjaer, Head of In-fleeting, Maersk Line.


“The ongoing political instability in countries such as Ivory Coast, Libya and Syria has had a tremendous impact on the inhabitants,” explains Helene Regnell, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, Maersk Line.

“As a transportation company we can help assist those people simply by leveraging what we do well, and by forming collaborative public–private partnerships to make the most of our relief efforts.”