Harvard Design Magazine #43

Harvard Design Magazine #43

The more stuff we accumulate, the more space we need to store it all. Vast portions of the landscape are claimed and governed by spaces of storage, their maintenance, and the goods that move through them—or remain buried within them indefinitely.
This issue of Harvard Design Magazine investigates and unpacks the contents, containers, and systems of storage that organize our world.
Storage is the aggregation and containment of the material and immaterial stuff of culture; but also the safeguarding—or hoarding—of energy and tools for some imagined future purpose. How does all this stuff mask or overcompensate for economic and ecological bankruptcy? Is storage about greed or need? Storage, perhaps, is everything we can live without but insist on living with.
“Shelf Life” explores what’s inside the box (shed, tank, urn, vault, crypt, crate, case, pot, bag, vat, morgue, safe, bin, archive, warehouse, cabinet, cellar, cemetery, depository, locker, freezer, landfill, library). Even as we attempt to reduce and recycle, the stuff that we dispose of also needs to be stored. Where do we put it? Our planet is now a saturated receptacle. This warehouse is full, and we’re all inside it.


Table of Contents

EDITOR’S NOTE

Socks and Stocks
Jennifer Sigler

ARTIFACTS

Learning from the Steel
Susan Nigra Snyder

Mammoth and Other Frozen Meats
Hi’ilei Julia Hobart

A Civic Monument That Never Was
Fabrizio Gallanti

Built Like a Skyscraper
Craig Robertson

Catching Rain in Singapore
Benjamin Leclair-Paquet

Grain Silos Go to India
Ateya Khorakiwala

Information Material
Jesse LeCavalier

Keeping It Fresh
Melissa Cate Christ , Tomas Holderness, Daisy Tam

Marking Toxicity
Robb Moss, Peter Galison

Meals, Ready to Throw Away
Jesse Connuck
Media Clutter
Lynn Spigel

Slope to Drain
Kate Orff

The Other City
Samuel Medina

Trash at the Center of the Theater of the World

DESIGN EARTH

Use in Case of Emergency Only
Jacob Lillemose

When Aalto Met Google
Rory Hyde

COLUMNS

Crackers, Granite Mountain, and Future Memories
Brian Evenson

Cupboard Love
Emily King

Repeat
Jonathan Olivares

Anxious about Stuff
Martti Kalliala

Architecture without Content
Kersten Geers

Carry, Conceal, Hide, Suggest, Cover
Femke de Vries, Joke Robaard

Formatting the Modern Dream
Anna-Maria Meister
Sant’Eustachio
Barry Yourgrau

The Five Points of Cloud Architecture
Antonio Furgiuele

The Temperamental Interior
Zeina Koreitem, John May

ESSAYS

Before BILLY: A Brief History of the Bookcase
Shannon Mattern

Storage Flows: Logistics as Urban Choreography
Clare Lyster

La Esmeralda, and a Brief Interrogation of Prison Ship Memory
Bryan Finoki
Gray Space
Alex O’Briant

Hiding in Plain View
Mark Mulligan

Hoarders of Magnitude: Super (and Not-So-Super-) Organisms
Kiel Moe

Life in Storage
Peggy Kamuf

Notes on More
Andrew Holder

Objectives: The Architectural Potentials of Storage
Megan Panzano

The Trove: On Vaults, Innards, and the Broad Collection
Mimi Zeiger
INSERT

In My Possession
Maira Kalman

INTERVIEWS

Under the Bed Is a Dark, Cool Place
Darra Goldstein, Christina E. Crawford

Designing the Void
Anupama Kundoo, Ateya Khorakiwala

Talking Objects
Martin Roth, Mohsen Mostafavi

Unité as White Cube
Tom Burr, Alex Kitnick


PHOTO ESSAY

Assemblages
Armin Linke
PLUS

Lager: Two Storage Buildings for Ricola
Jacques Herzog
Cryogenesis
Rhonda Ganz

Fulfillment
David Zielnicki