Business Publications

Sheltering in style: this series of colourful, eye-catching bus shelters dignifies and animates the business of bus travel

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2004 by Connie Van Cleef

In terms of infrastructure and experience, bus travel still tends to be a marginalized means of transport, though in terms of sustainability, it has obvious advantages over car use. Doubtless more people would take to buses if facilities were more civilized and running times more reliable. This is the basic premise of the Zuidtangent (literally 'south tangent'), a major new bus route in the Netherlands linking the city of Haarlem with Schiphol Airport to the south-east. Buses operate on a specially constructed dedicated track punctuated at intervals by a series of eye-catching bus shelters. The design of these, along with other elements such as fencing, viaducts, windscreens, tunnels, paving and barriers was overseen by Maurice Nio, who has created an elegant, unified architectural language that elevates the experience of bus travel. Nio's startling, organically inspired bus station at Hoofddorp, which was premiated in the last artd awards cycle (AR December 2003), is typical of his imaginative approach to prosaic, budget conscious programmes.

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Here, rather than a single landmark structure, the challenge was to devise a system of different elements along the route. The most distinctive of these are the individual bus shelters, with their coloured glass canopies springing lightly off warped and bowed steel structures that resemble twisted fish skeletons. A gently undulating tubular steel frame forms the main back bone, with smaller spinal arms acting as support for the individual canopy panels. Anchored in place by planar fixings, the translucent panels cast tinted shadows as light seeps through them, like giant fragments of stained glass windows. Slim fluorescent light fittings are incorporated into the backbone structure, and place names in sleek, superscale graphics are printed onto the clear glass screens that enclose each stop. The construction has a quirky fluidity, its streamlined contours exuding the dynamism of a quick sketch that has lost none of its verve and energy in translation to built form. And the public response is encouraging--since the new route opened, passenger numbers have been well in excess of expectations, proof of the civilizing potential of good design for the everyday.

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