PILES

While many globally traded goods arrive anonymously in shipping containers or through pipelines; piles of material stored in open air are a relic of a more palpable era where rail yards and harbors abounded in the sights and smells of material flow. The pile is the architecture of the holding stage between a material’s arrival and accumulation from one mode (such as ship or rail) and its distribution into the city through another (most commonly, the truck). As the net differential between accumulation and dispersal, the pile is a direct expression of material consumption in the city.