An Original Arctic Bus Stop

[kaima]

Clever bus stop features rotating pods to shield passengers from the wind
The prototype also makes use of lights and sounds

By Liz Stinson Dec 16, 2019, 9:30am EST
People standing at bus stop with glowing lights
Samuel Pettersson


The bus is a deeply underappreciated form of transportation, but one thing is true: Waiting for one can be a terrible experience. That’s especially the case if you happen to live in the Arctic, where it’s freezing cold for a big chunk of the year.

Architecture studio Rombout Frieling Lab and Research Institutes of Sweden decided to do something about the bus waiting problem and designed the Station of Being, a prototype bus stop that cleverly helps out passengers waiting in harsh weather.

The first version of the bus stop, deployed in Umeå, Sweden, features timber nooks that hang from the ceiling, shielding passengers from the wind and offering a bit of privacy. These rotating “cocoons” were informed by the team’s research, which found that people prefer to stand or lean rather than sit while waiting for the bus in the cold.


People standing in timber pods at bus stop.
Samuel Pettersson
The station also has a “smart roof” that uses distinct lights and sounds to alert passengers to approaching buses. ”The sounds and lights indicate the destination of the bus,” Rombout Frieling told Dezeen. “For instance, when glassy tones sound, the bus goes to the locally famous glass factory.”

These are simple but thoughtful design choices that allow people to stay cozy and make the most of their time while waiting instead of anxiously staring down the road for every approaching bus.

[pieter]

Kai,

Rombout Frieling is a typical Eindhoven based Dutch designer, engineer and innovator. Eindhoven has one of the 3 technical universities in the Netherlands next to Delft and Enschede and Eindhoven is the city of Phillips, Daf Trucks and Brabantia, a privately owned Dutch company which manufactures items for the home such as waste bins, laundry racks, food storage containers and other products.







Eindhoven is the fifth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, located in the south of the country. It had a population of 231,469 in 2019, making it the largest city in the province of North Brabant. Eindhoven was originally located at the confluence of the Dommel and Gender. Eindhoven has grown from a little town in 1232 to one of the biggest cities in the Netherlands with around 230,000 inhabitants in 2020. Much of its growth is due to Philips, DAF Trucks and Brabantia.

Eindhoven has long been a centre of cooperation between research institutes and industry. This tradition started with Philips (the NatLab was a physical expression of this) and has since expanded to large cooperative networks. The Eindhoven University of Technology hosts an incubator for technology startups and the NatLab has developed into the High Tech Campus Eindhoven. Also, TNO (the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) has opened a branch on the university campus. This tradition has also fostered inter-industry cooperation in the region; one example of this is the announcement in September 2010 of a new research lab for high-grade packaging materials, a cooperation of IPS Packaging and Thales Cryognetics.

This cooperative tradition has also developed into a different direction than the traditional technology research done at the university. Starting in 2002, the university, the Catharina hospital, Philips Medical and the University of Maastricht joined forces and started joint research into biomedical science, technology and engineering. Within Eindhoven, this research has been concentrated in a new university faculty (BioMedical Technology or BMT). This development has also made Eindhoven a biomedical technology hub within the country and its (European) region.

Back to Rombout Frieling, the Design Academy Eindhoven an interdisciplinary educational institute for art, architecture and design in Eindhoven, Netherlands, was probably his start. The work of its faculty and alumni have brought it international recognition. The work of Rombout Frieling breathes the Eindhoven innovative, technological, practical (pragmatic) and design qualities and identity. A lot of Dutch design comes from Eindhoven next to Amsterdam, Arnhem (design city), Utrecht and Rotterdam.



www.rombout.design/#start

Cheers,
Pieter

Source: Wikipedia/Google search

[pieter]

Rombout Frieling lecture for the Technological University Eindhoven


Rombout Frieling during Element Urban Talks 2017 in Kraków, Poland

[pieter]

[karl]

Kai

A very innovative idea in design for people as this bus stop. Rotating pods as people protection from weather is a very good idea, for it seems cold wind seems to become colder whilst passing through an enclosed area in as well as wind driven rain.

Karl

[Jaga]

what a cool idea!