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Presentation
DESIGN COMPETITION - We Create 2020 Bus Shelter Design Competition
Better Block SGF (2020)
  • Sara Khorshidifard
  • Theodore Dentinger
  • Nathalie Linsey
  • Keith Mills
  • Shaza Umran
Abstract
SCOTT BUS SHELTER
An A-B-C-D Manual for Springfield Bus Shelters
 
What if Bus Shelters are more than Bus Shelter? What is a Bus Shelter that serves as more than a Bus Shelter? The Scott Street Bus Shelter serves as a place. Beyond practicalities of a waiting station for city bus passengers, bicyclist, and pedestrians, this shelter marks a destination for lounging by carving unique moments for pause from banalities of mundane urban neighborhoods. The shelter is where to go, see, and experience matters that are green, ecological, edible, musical, and joyful.  The bus shelter is composed of four key components, also referred to as the A-B-C-D of a tactical conceptual manual: [A] Porous Concrete Plinth, [B] Modular Shed, [C] Contextualized Feature, and [D] Public Space Parklet.

A is a permeable platform conceived as an ecological underlayment and made from waste crushed concrete/recycled aggregate.

B is a kit-of-parts structure using weathered reclaimed timber and gradients of wood screening on side walls. The platform and the structure together (A and B) form the bus shelter’s actual body, which can be prototypical and reproduced as bus shelter elsewhere in the city. Side walls in direct tactile contact with the occupants in their inside and outside house pinned information boards and vertical garden planter boxes.

C is a custom-made feature of the Scott shelter. Akin to an expressionist outfit for its nondescript body, the contextualized piece that can vary from site to site embodies and manifests uniqueness. Embedding in the unique place of a site where a bus shelter would be built, the component is informed and inspired by site-specific aspects to harmonize each bus-shelter-as-place with(in) surroundings.

D is a complementary public-space fragment that is appended based on an overall presumption that, around each possible site location for a prospective bus shelter in Springfield, one might find extra patches of underutilized land. Public space fragments would join to foster and promote the making of the place of a bus shelter, in the case of Scott, merging with and appropriating the open corner of Scott and Broadway.

The Scott Bus Shelter contextualizes by using a constructed-ground feature that is shaped to hover above the generic platform and structure. The surface is wrapped, creased, hollowed and mounded as needed to hold a green roof through which to collect rainwater, seating spaces, and a raingarden. Rainwater, in parts, drains into the soil for irrigation and into semi-transparent pipes located underneath the surface and next to the bus shelter. Easily perceptible for educational purpose, the water leads down musically into an exposed barrel basin. In addition to seating, a sound-wall and music station is incorporated into the complementary public space parklet at the corner of Scott and Broadway. 

This particular site was chosen amongst the WeCreate 2020’s three given site options due to its positionality in the heart of the Grant Beach Neighborhood and its distinct adjacency as terra proximus to the Drew Lewis Foundation’s Community Hub. Being archetypal of many Springfield neighborhoods, the locality makes the Scott shelter a replicable scheme. The community center on the formerly-blighted Fairbanks School nearby allows the shelter to be conceived as a means to serve the people coming to the center. Becoming part of a collective, the Scott shelter makes then a vignette or an outside snippet of the Fairbanks, benefiting the community. 
                       
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring March 7, 2020
Location
Springfield, MO
Comments
Student design team wins “People’s Choice Award” endowed by AIA Springfield and Tau Sigma Delta
Citation Information
Sara Khorshidifard, Theodore Dentinger, Nathalie Linsey, Keith Mills, et al.. "DESIGN COMPETITION - We Create 2020 Bus Shelter Design Competition" Better Block SGF (2020)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sara_khorshidifard/29/
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-NC-ND International License.