Request stop: this new bus shelter design programme challenges the economic and creative limits associated with bust travel - Design Review - Bradford, England - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, July, 2002 by Catherine Slessor

Waiting for a bus is rarely time spent in civilized or stimulating conditions. Bus travel is regarded as the cheapest and most marginalized form of transport, and structures and interchanges associated with it tend to be designed with an emphasis on economy rather than imagination.

In Bradford, however, the role of the bus stop has been radically re-evaluated. Culture Company, an arts organization, assembled a team of architects, artists and engineers to re-examine and transform the smallest and often most neglected element of transport infrastructure. The outcome is a series of eye-catching shelters that enhance and dignify bus travel and make a strong statement in the urban environment. Bradford is also bidding to become European City of Culture in 2008 and the bus stop programme is seen by the local authority as evidence of the city's willingness to innovate.

Working in collaboration with artists, architects Bauman Lyons designed six new shelters. Resembling a series of urban follies -- not unlike English provincial versions of Tschuml's Deconstructivist interventions at La Villette (AR August 1989) -- the shelters share a common language of contorted metal planes and vivid colour. Two of the structures are topped by 2m masts equipped with a windcharger that generates power to warm the seats inside. It also symbolizes the wider ambition of developing a sustainable transport policy for the city. Artist group Greyworld devised a sound installation for two of the shelters: 'songs of colour', which reflects the hues worn by people passing by, creating an intriguing ephemeral sound environment.

For another of the shelters, writer Tim Etchells devised an epic, 24-hour text that unfolds line by line on a digital display for passengers to contemplate as they wait for their buses.

Bus stop design is generally reduced to the most basic fundamentals of function, health and safety, with little attention paid to other aspects such as comfort, stimulation and meaning. The challenge of the Bradford programme was to work within such traditionally limiting constraints and yet be inventive. The programme has proved so successful that a similar initiative is to be carried out in neighbouring Manchester. The brief will be to create a dozen bus stops across the city that encourage social interaction. Perhaps this marks the end of the bus stop as we know it. C.S.