Walsall Bus Station
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View from south-east, with concourse building to left and steps up to bus stands beneath main roof
Timothy Soar (website) Download Original
Station that receives more than 100 buses an hour, housed under a large elliptical roof canopy with tree-like columns and circular skylights
The project is composed of three elements: the main roof which covers 11 bus stands, a concourse building and a smaller canopy with another three stands.
The design grew out of the observation that buses travel in curves rather than right angles. The station’s open sides allow people to enter and leave from all directions. Additionally, the project opened up an adjacent public square, framed by the existing bank and church.
The large oval roof demanded a high degree of engineering input – it is 45m wide, resting on 12 irregularly spaced steel tree-like columns. It has 17 small oculi and ten large cowls cast into it to let in daylight and frame the sky. At night, uplighters on the columns shine on to the reflective painted underside of the roof. The hollow columns take rainwater and services, so the soffit is clean, apart from the tripartite column heads.
Artists Tanya Kovats and Alex Hartley were appointed to rework the glass screens between the bus bays with large opaque circles, both to meet the building regulation condition that glass should not be entirely transparent and to reflect the giant oculi in the roof.
Data
- Begun: Sep 1998
- Completed: Jun 2000
- Floor area: 3,171m2
- Sectors: Transport, Public realm
- Total cost: £3.8M
- Procurement: JCT 1980
- Address: St. Pauls Street, Walsall, WS1 1NR, United Kingdom
Professional Team 
- Architect: Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
- Project architects: Ceri Davies, Jonathan Hall, Louise Munch, Paul Monaghan, Peter Morris, Peter Sargent, Simon Allford, Susan Le Good, Victor Kite
- Client: Centro
- Quantity surveyor: Appleyard & Trew
- Structural engineer: Atelier One
- Civil engineer: Clark Smith Partnership
- Landscape architect: Watkins:Dally
- Artist: Hartley & Kovats
- Main contractor: Shepherd Construction
Suppliers
- Sedum roof: Erisco Bauder
- Rooflights: Rooflight Systems
- Concrete and groundworks: O'Donnell Developments
- Glazed screens: Solaglas