Local Infrastructures for Global Systems: Containerization and the Alameda Corridor

The Alameda Corridor is a 20 mile long, 55 foot wide and 33 foot deep railway trench that connects the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach to the national railway network. The corridor handles about one third of all shipping container traffic that enters the two ports, most of which comes from China. Accordingly, it would not be an exaggeration at all to say that the Alameda Corridor is central to everyday capitalism in the United States. 

To demonstrate the Alameda Corridor’s global resonance, this project traces the journey of a single t-shirt -- based on relative scales of time, money and distance -- from its production in the Ready-Made Garment district of Dhaka, Bangladesh to its consumption in a Wal-Mart store outside of Chicago, Illinois. The t-shirt, which is produced for about $3.00 and travels by truck, train, cargo vessel, crane, and forklift before arriving at its destination half way around the world where it will sell for under $10. 

Ultimately, in following the t-shirt from production to consumption, this project reveals the mechanized underbelly of the global economy: a logistics system so intricately coordinated that even the most minor changes to its structure: re-designs of shipping vessels, delays in delivery, shortages in raw materials, and so on, can trigger drastic ebbs and flows in all ends of system. Otherwise known as the Butterfly Effect, the smallest alteration to shipping methods in China, for instance, could mean total closures to ports, railways, and stores in the US and elsewhere. For some industries, the daily precision of this system means the difference between financial solvency and total bankruptcy.  The drawings, then, make visible the time, movement and mechanics of a clock-work network which, despite its physical presence, functions greatest when it proceeds unnoticed and invisibly.

 

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.