Buildings Are Just Inhabitable Shoeboxes

Connecting the architectural inspiration of the VAA 1s.

There’s a certain class of sneaker collector who insists on keeping the boxes. As the culture around collecting them has evolved, some parts of the mythology still ring true. The image of a Nike shoebox full of money remains embedded in the collective digital consciousness of people who grew up reading blogs and forums like NikeTalk.

The notion of keeping your money secure in an orange-tinged box rather than the confines of an unseen bank account remains a hood staple. Meanwhile, the proliferation of Container Store drop-front shoeboxes signifies the rise of a new kind of sneakerhead.

It’s a more casual consumer that doesn’t have that NIGO-like obsession and rapid recall of what box holds which shoe, or the in-house archivist mindset to think to put a picture as a means of organizing a massive collection , realizing that the box is in fact as important as the product in it. Why else would people pay so much attention to tissue paper or document the ways in which Nike shoebox color schemes have evolved?