Project Description
Packaging is often a means to an end. We receive a good, unwrap it, and discard the container. However, some forms of packaging, like shipping crates and pallets, are designed for durability and reuse. These sturdy qualities often inspire more robust modes of use than initially intended. The same is true for the milk crate.
PORO-City proposes a dialogue with the many communities of Los Angeles. Milk crates function as a brick system that is neither transparent nor solid, housing the exhibition without imposing a rigid boundary. The milk crate’s flexibility allows for various design options that can adapt to different spaces. Moreover, its immediately familiar iconography makes it approachable to a wide range of audiences.
Assembled as undulating porous walls, crates frame views and emphasize the experiential relationship between exhibition and site. The stacked brick pattern recalls the textures of breeze block walls, iconic surfaces of the LA landscape. The combination of bright colors and porosity makes the assemblage enticing to approach and exciting to engage as a place of discovery.
The modularity of the crate allows for flexibility and imagination, and its sturdy construction makes it ideal for reuse. In this way, milk crates exemplify resourcefulness and the ability of people to create the extraordinary from the mundane. Constantly recombined and reinvented, the aggregated milk crates behave like a lively community.
While the Exhibition design must satisfy creative ways to exhibit artwork, the materials used are also provided a “second life.” We donated the crates to several community organizations after the exhibition, including Shelter Partnership, Core Response, Food Finder, Food Not Bombs, Tia Chuchas Centro Cultural, Bicycle Kitchen, and Beldevere Community Garden as a second home for our exhibition materials. We collectively discussed ideas including shelving for clothes, planters for community gardening, storage for preschool supplies, and crates for food distribution. We hope the crates can continue to be adapted, reconfigured, and reused for many years to come, and we are excited to see the vibrant and colorful crates continue to appear as recognizable symbols of LA’s creativity.
PORO-City proposes a dialogue with the many communities of Los Angeles. Milk crates function as a brick system that is neither transparent nor solid, housing the exhibition without imposing a rigid boundary. The combination of bright colors and porosity makes the assemblage enticing to approach and exciting to engage as a place of discovery.
The modularity of the crate allows for flexibility and imagination, and its sturdy construction makes it ideal for reuse. In this way, milk crates exemplify resourcefulness and the ability of people to create the extraordinary from the mundane.