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Bus shelter 2006 – PROPOSAL

The bus shelter project is for a busy metropolis somewhere in the world.

Two large and comfortable chairs are placed inside a central bus shelter. Through GPS the chairs and the approaching bus are connected and if two waiting passengers chose to sit down, sound is transmitted from the bus and mixes with the soundscape surrounding the bus stop. The chairs change colour when a bus approach and when the bus leaves again. The idea with the project is to create intimacy by the bus shelter and at the same time create a connection between where you are and where you are going to be.

Two oversized and comfortable sofa chairs are placed in each bus stop shelter and hopefully people will eventually feel compelled to sit down. Gradually, the colour of each sofa chair gets brighter, reflecting the fact that the next bus (whose position is traced with GPS-technology) comes closer to the bus stop.

 Artistic Experiment Project

The Event of Waiting

Surrounding the sofa chairs sounds are emitted with a gradually evolving volume as the bus approaches. The sofa chairs thereby reflect the ambiance inside the approaching bus: We hear laughter, mobile calls and circulation noises extracted from the remote place.The source of sound and noises are shifting from one sofa chair to the other – successively as in a polite conversation. The two chairs are inviting to include the conversation between to people seated in the chairs, and thereby transferring the commuter waiting in the shelter into a kind of “third space”: Not here and not there either. When the bus finally arrives, the sofa chairs glow at their brightest, and the sounds are now matching those experienced inside the bus. Then the bus leaves and the reverse situation is folding out: The colour of the sofa chairs is now fading and the sounds from inside the bus slowly vanish again.

The change of colour will be realized with the help of thermo-ink controlled by inbuilt warming pads controlled at a distance with sensors. Another option will be the use of luminescent wires with a diameter of around 1mm, embedded/knitted inside the fabric of the sofa chairs in the form of patterns.

Credit
Design and concept: Hanne-Louise Johannesen and Michel Guglielmi (Diffus Design)