PIXIE BUS SHELTER
Client
NHAI Bus Shelter Competition
Year
2022
Location
Indian National Highways
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The highway bus shelters of India are currently unidentifiable and disorganized. Generally, these bus shelters are spread in a fractious way with irresistible crowds, and unmanageable vendor shops placed in a disorganized & chaotic style. Between all this, the travelers try to find shelters under the vendor stations to wait for their buses which becomes extremely tedious and exhausting.
The waiting experience hence induces stasis, a slowing of time, a halt to action. Yet, even when they’re waiting, they’re unconsciously moving and looking for ways that can speed up their waiting time, resulting in an irritated and uneasy situation. But what if we celebrate this idea of waiting as an experience? What if we create an architecture through which the passing of time seems to be really small?
Hence, the idea of our proposed bus shelter should not only be, to provide a shaded space to the visitors, but also to make the idea of waiting as an engaging and interactive experience. This is achieved in the proposal by envisioning the structure to be an urban character itself, allowing people to connect and get enchanted by its presence.
By using such an idea, proposed bus shelter focuses on the needs and aspirations of people by providing them a place making element that focuses on the concept of community participation as well as individual quietude.
To completely facilitate the bus station, the functional overlays on the narrative are kept in mind during the process, like MAINTENANCE of the bus stop, SAFETY all day, INFORMATIVE about bus arrival and departure, PROTOTYPE YET UNIQUE bus shelters, RESTING SPACES, and PUBLIC FACILITIES for all.
The following five major ideas were generated after analyzing the needs that further created a proposal that is wholesome, sustainable, and celebrates the idea of waiting.
INTERACTIVE MODULE WALL
PUBLIC FACILITIES
VENDOR STATION
SHADED RESTING SPACES
PRE FAB MODULAR
The five major ideas above extracted from the narrative were translated into 3 different units of bus station namely, UNIT A, UNIT B, UNIT C. Unit A consists of Vendor station as major function while Unit C consists of Washroom as major function. Unit A and C also provide facilities like charging points, dustbins, digital board for buses, and drinking water.
Unit B is the modular wall with 8 modules in each placed in such a way that it becomes an inviting body for the users. Out of these 3 units, Unit A and C remains same at all bus stations, but Unit B (Module Wall) can change along z-axis making every bus station unique in itself.
The position of the modules can be changed as per the requirement of the context. It is highly interactive and pleasing giving people the reason to converse and interact with each other till the time their respective buses arrive.
These three units coherently create a bus shelter that commits itself to the overarching narrative of providing serene, soulful shelter to the people and allow them to shift their energies from being tiresome to being enthusiastic during waiting time.
