Original at
The Independent
Top deck
Buses - unlike trains, planes and cars -
don't generally get a look-in when it
comes to architecture. Which is why
Walsall's new bus station is so exciting
Fiona Rattray reports
02 July 2000
Transport has spawned a spectacular range of building forms in the industrial
age: from the hallowed halls of railway stations and the high-end glamour
of the international airport, to the more modest multi-storey car park and
consumption-friendly petrol station. But while planes, trains and cars continue
to inspire visionary architecture, there is one mode of transport that is
rarely associated with eye-catching buildings. The humble, lumbering, shuddering
bus is the poor relation: the vehicle that architecture forgot. And who
ever heard of a bus-spotter?
Until now, that is. For a modest west Midlands town like Walsall to enter
the 21st century with one exciting piece of contemporary British architecture
is an achievement. To gain two in the space of a few months looks like genius.
But while Caruso St John's assured Walsall art gallery is no more than one
might expect in this era of Lottery-funded arts projects, Allford Hall Monaghan
and Morris's bus station is, in its own, less glamorous way, every bit as
exciting.
When St Paul's bus station opens later this month, it will serve five bus
companies sending 100 buses an hour through Walsall's compact centre. Built
at a cost of £6.5m to Birmingham-based transport body Centro, it's
a functional building - not much more than a large slim roof, 80 metres
long by 45 wide. Supported at one end by a glazed building and elsewhere
by a seemingly random series of delicate, branching steel pillars, it appears
to float. Both the roof and the building are elliptical in shape: the former
punctured by a series of round holes; the latter housing smart public toilets,
retail spaces and offices.
"We wanted to make a building which has a powerful urban resonance," says
AHMM partner Peter Morris. But the exercise, he says, has been as much about
solving the problems of traffic movement and the vagaries of the existing
site as making a design statement. Directly in front of the bus station
is a new public square, part of AHMM's competition-winning design, linking
it with the neighbouring St Paul's church. The square is important - not
just because it saves the church (part shopping centre, part place of worship)
from the sorry fate of urban eclipse, or because it makes for a more pleasant
(and safer) approach to the station - but because its creation demands that
the road swerve to the left. It introduces a sinuous aspect to the site
which reflects the curves of the structure.
Crossing the square you enter the station up elegant fanned steps (there
is a ramp round the outside for wheelchairs and buggies). Once under the
concrete canopy the most glorious aspect of AHMM's design is revealed. The
roof is pierced by a collection of funnel-shaped chimneys or "cowls", each
set at an angle. Light floods in through the cowls, spotlighting the road
below. The larger ones (5m in diameter), those above the bus lanes, are
open to the sky. The others, above the waiting platforms, are glazed. The
glass keeps the passengers dry while the open voids allow some of the exhaust
fumes to escape. According to the architects, the dramatic light effect
is inspired by the visions of heaven in Powell and Pressburger's 1946 film,
A Matter of Life and Death. It sounds like a lofty aspiration but if you've
seen the film you'll know it works.
Up on the roof it's a thrilling sight: a lunar landscape of emerging cowls.
Peer over the edge and you get a vertiginous sense of their generous scale.
Come September, when planting conditions are right, a green roof of sedum
(a low-maintenance succulent) will be planted. It will be invisible from
the street: its job will simply be to soak up carbon monoxide and replace
it with oxygen.
The underside of the roof is painted white - increasing the light levels
and highlighting the exposed concrete of the cowls. At first glance the
surface has the subtle patina of silvery grey metal. Architects love concrete,
but the public doesn't and AHMM's selective revealing of the material here
lends it a precious quality. Elsewhere it has been used to equally good
effect. Inside the administrative building, holes created during the casting
process have been left unfilled, creating a subtle grid pattern on the walls.
Outside, smooth monolithic slabs support cantilevered hardwood benches and
timetable holders.
There is something wonderfully unfamiliar about the Walsall bus station.
Aside from the dramatic roof and elegant, curving organisation of the space,
the colour-coded signage (designed by AHMM with the graphic design company,
Atelier Work) has the clean simplicity that you find in European cities
but not, as a rule, in ad hoc Britain. Even the bus in the diagram looks
foreign.
In the site office of the contractors, Shepherd, there is a photograph of
the old bus station: a perfunctory series of elongated shelters with metal
roofs. It looks like the kind of place where you would sit with your shopping
in smelly discomfort, wishing away the minutes until your bus finally arrived.
Sitting on one of the new benches, looking up at the roof, you can imagine
being so mesmerised by the cloud movements or the shafts of light that bus
after bus could pass you by, the frozen peas in your bag turning to mush.
It's as worthy of contemplation as a piece of art and it's no more than
Walsall, having given the country a wonderful new gallery, deserves. *
See also
previous article.
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