Should urban 'pop-ups' be shipped out?

More evidence that the term 'pop-up' has jumped the shark:

BoxPark under construction, August 2011. Photo by author.

A recently published article extolls the virtues of BoxPark, a new pop-up mall in the trendy Shoreditch area of London. Constructed from discarded shipping containers, the author calls the project a "convenient alliance of economy and ecology."
Economical, because the units allow greater flexibility and less fixity for their renters. Ecological because the structures take advantage of the embodied energy already invested in manufacturing the containers. The article quotes architect Jure Kotnik who states that up to 400 shipping container structures currently exist, worldwide.

London's Container Park dates
to the mid-1990s. Photo by author. 

While BoxPark might be the latest addition to the London's container landscape, it is hardly the first. Pioneers in shipping container architecture entered the London scene in the mid-1990s at Trinity Buoy Wharf's Container Park, part of a residential arts district located on the Thames. Container Park II and Container Learn, a classroom expansion space for the city's Tower Hamlet College, followed. More recently, the View Tube was constructed in the in-progress Olympic Park, providing a snaking, lime green temporary platform for stadium construction voyeurism. At least two other shipping container structures are currently slated for construction in the Borough of Newham: Pontoon Docks and the Caravanserai project, winners of a 2011 temporary use competition. London's recent pedigree in container structures had clearly been established before BoxPark debuted.

Though the number of recycled shipping container structures has been (mercifully) lower along the East Coast, there have been a few notable examples in recent years. The grandest example may have been the Nomadic Museum, a temple of shipping containers designed by Shigero Ban and located temporarily on New York City's Hudson River Pier 54. Moving from Venice, Italy, to various locations across the US, there was something about Ban's project that was truthful and appropriate. Particularly in its New York incarnation, the Nomadic Museum referenced the shipping uses which the pier originally accommodated. The more egalitarian Dumpster Pools - while not constructed of either dumpsters or shipping containers, but at once reminiscent of both - debuted in 2009.

London's BoxPark might be noteworthy, but more for the fact that it represents a moment - one where the idea of temporary construction has entered the public consciousness. No longer considered avant guarde, these structures are almost expected in the urban landscape. Though temporary spaces can take many forms, the shipping container seems to be the form of the moment - relatively cheap, plentiful, with inherent structural stability. Situated within a greater context, one can't help but wonder if the transformative claims of shipping container construction are somewhat overstated.