A Tiny Austrian Town Has the Coolest Bus Shelters (2014) | Hacker News Reader

A Tiny Austrian Town Has the Coolest Bus Shelters (2014)

citylab.com

101 pointsCaliforniaKarl28 comments

Here's one of my favourites[1] - in Bjørnevatn, (very) close to Norway's border with Russia on some 70 degrees of latitude.

It is a shovel from a heavy excavator used in a nearby mine; offers protection from the elements as well as anything except all-out nuclear war. Weighs in at 18,000kg/40,000lbs.

[1] https://www.ifinnmark.no/ost-finnmark/norges-toffeste-bussku...

If the burst is not from the front, you'll be fine up to an overpressure of around 10psi, at which point the anchors will probably fail.

Some of these may be really arty, but IMO a functional bus shelter need to have:

* Protection from weather (both sun and rain)

* Protection from wind

* Some sort of privacy or seclusion area for women or children who have to wait alone

* Comfortable seating for long waits

* Space to put your bags or shopping without having to have them on the ground.

* Provide a clear view of approaching buses

Amazing how many architectural 'designs' miss some of these simple elements.

The only thing the simple concrete bus shelters in MY small Australian town have to distinguish them is paintings by local school children and artists [0], but at least they meet most of the above criteria.

[0] - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-08/darwin-bus-stops-pain...

In Canberra the older Action bus shelters were concrete tubes They were pretty barren but in the cold wind of winter it was great. Looking at the photo's in the article I kept thinking, it snows there, won't they be so cold and freezing.

> Some sort of privacy or seclusion area for women or children who have to wait alone

I’m neither of those things, but if the issue is personal safety, wouldn’t a secluded and private area be worse?

I'm similarly baffled by these ideas. They seem like bad ideas for so many reasons.

1. The point you make.

2. Any man or masculine-looking woman who winds up there (either accidentally or as the result of the other areas filling up) will be automatically viewed as a threat.

3. They're the western equivalent of burkas in that they promote the idea that men are uncontrollable beings and that the onus is on women to insulate themselves from us. (Though obviously they're far less extreme than a burka.)

4. A woman who can't be there finds herself alone in a sea of men, which seems like an extreme version of the situation they're trying to avoid.

This was my thought as well. Put someone who is vulnerable into an area where passers by can't see them, and then what?

Hope the stalker doesn't follow them in? Hope the opportunist criminals won't go stop to stop looking for someone alone to rob? etc etc

Privacy and seclusion are absolutely not whats needed at a public bus stop.

Let me clarify - I as talking about an area that allows a person to sit alone without the chance of anyone else sitting right next to them. I’ve seen benches with a separate seat with a high armrest or space between it to let a person sit alone.

Also, some of the bus shelters in my town have seats at the rear, which les someone sit and wait without wing visible from the street. Some have a small side wall which serve to obstruct the seated person from being fully viewed from approaching cars (if they wished).

The functionality of the bus shelters in the article appears to be to educate people about the wrong priorities and unappealing aesthetics of modern architecture. They're doing quite well in that regard.

Combining useful functionality and appealing aesthetics is a lost art nowadays. Even Apple has become mediocre at it. But modern architecture seems to strive for the exact opposite.

Men who have to wait alone can also be harassed or the target of criminals. I wouldn't exclude anyone from needing protection against crimes.

> Amazing how many architectural 'designs' miss some of these simple elements.

I'd argue that most of your points are usually not missed but left out deliberately. Protection against vandalism is the most important design criterion because damage from vandalism is the biggest cost factor. All the other things are often optional from the sponsors point of view.

Providing privacy and comfortable space are often explicitly not desired. There is even an name for that kind of design: Hostile architecture [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture

>Some sort of privacy or seclusion area for women or children who have to wait alone

How is this supposed to work? Especially with bus stations of that size?

Its public art, but only a few are remotely functional as 'shelters', and only cool as in freezing waiting for the bus. I like modern, even bauhaus and brutalist style, but these are just sketches, built. Architechure without consideration for the human using it is arguably immoral. But thats a whole conversation in itself.

Hell, the place I was at made 'immoral' bus stops. They were tired of homeless sheltering in them, so they barely have any protection from sun and rain. Too bad it gets 110F in the summer.

I prefer the home comforts of the Unst bus shelter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unst_Bus_Shelter

That is one of the most wholesome things I’ve ever read, thank you!

The coolest bus shelters are in Dubai - they have air conditioning. They look cool too.

http://manonthelam.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Air-condit...

Just look at the first fine specimen already. No protection against rain and wind, but a fine view of the landscape. Good thing the village sits in the rain shadow of the Alps!

yeah, that one had me wonder too. but i suppose before that there was nothing. and maybe the raised platform makes it easier to spot the bus in a distance

The biggest problem here is that they lack discoverability. You walk to bus stops which means they need to be recognizable and discoverable. If every one of them looks different, you need to memorize how all of them look to be able to spot them at a distance. This current design is only effective for residents that us the same couple of bus stops every day. For visitors, it's not very useful. Form has superseded function here.

The bus stops are for the surroundings of Krumbach, which probably means about one per village. I doubt it will be hard to discover them, especially because there are still signs for the buses there.

There are two photo books by Christopher Herwig of some amazing Soviet bus stops:

http://fuel-design.com/publishing/soviet-bus-stops/

http://fuel-design.com/publishing/soviet-bus-stops-volume-ii...

maybe the point is not to be overly functional but some sort of art trail that people hop on/hop off normal PT in between cafes and galleries etc. for a small town, even a few hundred tourists per month on weekends can make a huge difference to the economy. maybe someone else who knows the area could comment on the route.

Looks good, but I'm afraid it's generally uncomfortable to sit on.

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