Package design: more compelling than you think. From medicine to matches to spices to cookies to vitamins to paper bottles, this blog highlights interesting packaging. (And because it features their products far better than the non-profit store websites do, check out the fun wares from LA's Time Travel Mart, San Francisco's Pirate Supply Store, Brooklyn's Superhero Supply Store, and Ann Arbor's Robot Repair and Supply, previously discussed here on Metafilter.)
posted by CunningLinguist on Aug 12, 2009 - 29 comments

Shipping containers could be 'dream' homes for thousands. Yes, the design isn't great. They should have a contest for a version that would keep the cost the same. Esthetics don't have to be expensive.
posted by shetterly on Sep 24, 2008 - 65 comments

Building with the Intermodal Steel Building Unit: It's cheaper for overseas shippers to dump the containers in the United States rather than return them to their place of origin. Tampa Armature Works with St. Petersburg Neighborhood Housing Services Inc. have started recycling them into affordable, hurricane-resistant housing in St. Petersburg, Florida. Bob Vila was there to document it (flash video). Previously on MetaFilter, a brief history of the steel boxes.
posted by SteveInMaine on Sep 16, 2006 - 19 comments

Happy 50th birthday (bugmenot) to "the box that changed the world". (Video interview with the author, here.) On April 26, 1956, Malcolm McLean, a trucker from rural North Carolina, hired a crane to hoist 58 trailer-sized steel cargo boxes onto a refitted oil tanker. This modest experiment would profoundly alter international trade and the global economy, eventually creating the "biggest real-time datastreaming network in the world."
posted by soiled cowboy on Apr 26, 2006 - 27 comments