Port architecture : constructing the littoral / Peter Quartermaine

Includes bibliographical references.

Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- Introduction: Ports in image and word -- Landfall: signs and structures -- Freeway to China by Allan Sekula -- Plates: Seaways -- Human traffic -- Legacies and lessons -- Bibliography -- Index.

This book addresses ports and their architecture as the "forgotten gateway to the twentieth century', and in so doing reminds us to the extent to which maritime migration and trade have shaped - and still shape - the world we inhabit at the close of this millenium. It is a focus that the National Maritime Museum recognises as especially important from its own unique location at Greenwich, a river site linked with maritime exploration, trade and timekeeping. The history and architecture of our great site addresses the river and its ship borne trade, and the great tide of human traffic, and these also form a major element in the Museum's new Neptune Court galleries which open this year. The changed face of the huge dock complexes across the Tames from Greenwich - once watery acres now reborn as 'Docklands' - testify to the pace and scale that so many city docks have undergone within the generation. Dock sites worldwide are subject to development pressures and opportunities of many kinds. This book offers insights both into the central role that ports and their buildings have long held in our culture, and into the largely invisible role of the modern port in global trade. It invites us to reappraise ports as places exemplifying the best modern architecture, as well as centres of maritime commerce.