Lot/Ek: Mobile Dwelling Unit (Paperback)

~ Robert Kronenberg (Author), Christopher Scoates (Author), Henry Urbach (Author), Aaron Betsky (Author), LOT/EK (Contributor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Since 1955, when they were first standardized, shipping containers have had a radical effect on our physical reality. Seven million of these steel containers are now moving around the world, and their measurements have defined the design of ships, railroad cars, trucks, and cargo airplanes, as well as the landscape of ports, airports, and trucking yards. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the wider and much more invisible system of distribution, of just-in-time-inventory, of information networks in which the container moves.
LOT/EK, the New York-based studio with a reputation for creating architecture and environments using industrial objects, here takes on the standard shipping container as medium. The Mobile DwellingUnit (MDU) is "a shipping container transformed into a dwelling that nevertheless retains the attributes of a shipping container, i.e. it remains shippable." It is a "discreet mobile element" that can be moved around the globe, to anywhere with that can receive standard shipping containers. It's full-service interior includes push-out elements with space for sleeping, storage, eating, bathing, and cooking; these elements can be pushed smoothly back into the container when the occupant moves and needs to ship his or her living space along. Consider the MDU a trailer home for travelling between global villages.
LOT/EK: Mobile Dwelling Unit, the book, will not only document the MDU concept but will provide greater understanding of the work's cultural and social context with essays by leading architectural critics, theorists, historians, and practitioners. An interview with the designers by Chris Scoates will illuminate LOT/EK's process in the creation and development of the MDU as well as their unique approach to architecture. Henry Urbach will place the MDU project in the context of LOT/EK's larger body of work. Professor Robert Kronenberg, a leading expert on portable architecture, will consider the project within the history of the genre. Aaron Betsky, a leading design critic and Director of NAi, will explore the meaning of the MDU within a larger contemporary cultural and social context of mobility and habitation. A visual essay by Andrew Blauvelt and LOT/EK will explore the territories of the MDU's inspiration and related themes of nomadic travel and industrial systems of transportation.
Lot/Ek's work is a reminder that we live in cities still littered with industrial detritus of all kinds. --Metropolis magazine
We don't think that architecture should be just a mute container. --Giuseppe Lignano of LOT/EK

Essays by Aaron Betsky, Robert Kronenberg, Henry Urbach and Christopher Scoates

Paperback, 6.5 x 8.25 in., 160 pages, 96 color & 30 b/w illustrations

About the Author

LOT/EK is a New York-based architecture studio founded in 1993 by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano. Since then, LOT/EK has been involved in residential and commercial projects both in the U.S. and abroad, as well as exhibition design and site-specific installations for major cultural institutions and museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, all in New York. Besides heading their professional practice, Tolla and Lignano currently teach in the graduate school of architecture at Parsons School of Design, New York, and lecturing in major universities and cultural institutions throughout the U.S. and abroad. The office has achieved high visibility in the architecture/design/art world for its innovative approach to construction, materials and space, and for the use of technology as an integral part of architecture. Its projects are published in national and international publications, magazines and books, including The New York Times Magazine, *wallpaper, Domus, A+U, Interior Design, Wired, Surface, Metropolis, Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: D.A.P./University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara; illustrated edition edition (July 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 189102468X
• ISBN-13: 978-1891024689
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #665,583 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Useless, March 4, 2006

By	Pennsylvania Reader - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

The book is comprised of the following: many photos of shipping containers in their original, unmodified state; many pages of low-quality computer-aided-design images of shipping containers; some text about the idea of using shipping containers as housing phrased in vague architectural gibberish; and a few photos of a shipping container in the process of modification. The book looks like a souped-up version of an art student's thesis. (It doesn't contain the details or drawings that I assume would be required of an architecture student.) I don't mean that as an insult to art students, but as a way of saying that the contents of the book are conceptual, not practical. Scoates makes the points that shipping containers are abundant, interesting, and can be used for housing. (But it's not "about" environmental or cost solutions, according to LOT-EK.) That's it; nothing in the book is more than a restating of those basic points. If that's what you're seeking, you'll be happy with your purchase. But if you are looking for information, ideas, or inspiration about actually transforming shipping containers into housing, the book is utterly useless. Within five minutes of receiving it, I had it repackaged for return.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I'm confused, March 9, 2009

By	Chris R. - See all my reviews

This book centers around a shipping container design by LOT/EC. It seems to me the book's deadline came before this piece was finished. So you get lots of fluffy fluff trying to fill up a book with an unfinished project. Photos of the construction workers?!? I find the books design quite bad, but what can a designer do when hired to make a book & there's nothing to put in it? Avoid.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars MDU, July 14, 2007

By	Ozi-Kiwi (Australia) - See all my reviews

While this book was somewhat well written, it lacked detailed photos, and drawings to help explain the MDU and it's uses.
A little disapointed as the book could have explained detailes better.