Walsall Bus Station

Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Walsall, 2000

 

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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

  • View from south-east, with concourse building to left and steps up to bus stands beneath main roof    
  • The positioning of columns and cowls is determined by the traffic flow    
  • A smaller canopy, to the left, covers three more stands    
  • The main roof covers 11 bus stands    
  • Each stand has a hardwood bench set in a low concrete wall and a metal panel incorporating litter bin and help-point intercom    
  • Bus stands beneath the main roof    
  • Control room in the concourse building    
  • WCs in the concourse building    
  • The concourse building is partly enclosed with a curved glass screen    
  • Site plan    
  • Ground floor plan    
  • Roof plan    
  • Section    
  • Structural diagram    
  • Steel tree and roof canopy details    
  • Concrete cowl and roof canopy details    

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

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