'09
With Christopher Stone, as told to Gina Marinelli Photograph Courtesy Matthew Gosser
As an architect, one of the things I have to contribute to society is my skill for designing living spaces. The Live the Box competition started as an idea that I came up with from seeing shipping containers stacked high outside my office in Newark.
I thought that creating living units from shipping containers and marketing them at a very low cost could promote homeownership. What better than trying to create living space, and design it so that the least advantaged of us could afford to purchase it and have the satisfaction and pride of homeownership? But instead of the [shipping container unit] being something that I would design, I wanted to put it out to the architectural community-at-large, call upon the wisdom and experience of a broad spectrum of people, and try to come up with the best possible ideas for this contest, which was originally entitled Shelter with Dignity.
After almost two years of planning, a friend and former co-worker, Kate Dunn, called me and asked, “What are you doing, or would like to do, that would really excite you, and why aren’t you doing it?” I told her about this design competition, and she said, ”Well, let’s do it.” I was re-inspired. We had our first meeting, and we put it in motion. As chairperson of the Young Architects Forum for the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Newark and Suburban section, I called upon the membership for support. We also involved the Emerging Professionals Group of AIA NS, and we got many younger and student members involved.
We changed the name of the competition to Live the Box. Part of the reason for the change was because the [original] name, Shelter with Dignity, was really the end goal. We hoped to create living units from shipping containers that were exciting and that everyone would want to live in. Often [members of] the low economic group feels like they are pushed into sub-standard units, so we wanted to create units that anyone would want to live in, make them exciting, and also would be viewed with value in the marketplace.
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