Shipping Container: Object Lessons
Craig Martin
Jul 2026 · Bloomsbury US Audio · Narrated by Matthew Biddulph
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2 hr 47 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
Bloomsbury presents...
Shipping Container
by Craig Martin
read by Matthew Biddulph
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
The shipping container is all around: whizzing by on the highway, trundling past on rails, unloading behind a big box store even as you shop there, clanking on the docks just out of sight.... 90% of the goods and materials that move around the globe do so in shipping containers. It is an absolutely ubiquitous object, even if most of us have no direct contact with it. But what is this thing? Where has it been, and where is it going? Craig Martin’s book illuminates the “development of containerization”—including design history, standardization, aesthetics, and a surprising speculative discussion of the futurity of shipping containers.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Shipping Container
by Craig Martin
read by Matthew Biddulph
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
The shipping container is all around: whizzing by on the highway, trundling past on rails, unloading behind a big box store even as you shop there, clanking on the docks just out of sight.... 90% of the goods and materials that move around the globe do so in shipping containers. It is an absolutely ubiquitous object, even if most of us have no direct contact with it. But what is this thing? Where has it been, and where is it going? Craig Martin’s book illuminates the “development of containerization”—including design history, standardization, aesthetics, and a surprising speculative discussion of the futurity of shipping containers.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Bloomsbury presents...
Shipping Container
by Craig Martin
read by Matthew Biddulph
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
The shipping container is all around: whizzing by on the highway, trundling past on rails, unloading beh...
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About the author
Craig Martin is Senior Lecturer in Design Cultures at The University of Edinburgh, UK. He is the co-editor, with J. Rugg, of Spatialities: The Geographies of Art & Architecture (2011).
Craig Martin is Senior Lecturer in Design Cultures at The University of Edinburgh, UK. He is the co-editor, with J. Rugg, of Spatialities: The Geographies of Art & Architecture (2011).
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