Extremely Weird Bus Stops & Shelters

"QUANTUM SHOT" #858 Link - article by Avi Abrams "Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows... under my umbrella" You may remember the magical bus stop from the cult animation "My Neighbour Totoro" by Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, complete with a lovable monster and heart-warming sharing of umbrellas (watch it here). Or you might enjoy listening to a great "sunshine pop" classic "Bus Stop" by The Hollies. In any case, you will be quite unprepared to see the wildly bizarre (or simply ridiculous) bus stop designs and "abandonments" that we feature in this article. You might even start your own photographic collection of similarly misshaped and misused public transportation enclaves. As for some of the better-looking and creative bus stop designs... here are a few examples we like: (top: disco bus stop creative, original unknown; bottom left - ecological bus stop island, by Anton Kochurkin, via; bottom right - Maite Otano) Here is a cool bus stop, seen in Estonia: (image credit: Vladimir Kezling "Shark Attack" city bench seen in Thailand: (image via) ------- Bus station in Hoofddorp, Holland Designed by NIO architecten, this endearing orange blob looks like it just been squeezed out of a kid's toothpaste tube. It also comes in a plain unadorned concrete color, which looks even stranger than orange treatment: (images credit: Radek Brunecky via) A similarly cuved (and beautiful) bus stop is located in Casar de Caceres in western Spain: (image via) Winning design by Hannah Tribe and Marcus Trimble - from the North Sydney Bus Shelter and Canopy Entrance Competition of 2006 - looks quite different by day and by night: (image via) This turned inside-out, deconstructed and cheerfully painted Magic Bus Stop can be seen in Ventura, California (designed by Dennis Oppenheim): (images credit: Dennis Oppenheim, via) Here is a reverse bus stops (left image below) - with a wonderful sea views - by the artist Lisa Kereszi. On the right is the school bus "designer bus stop" seen in Athens, Georgia: (images via 1, 2) ------- Comfortable? You Bet! Bus stops on Shetland Island are all decorated different, but all are extremely comfortable (perhaps because the wait times are longer?) - (images via 1, 2, 3) Shown above are similarly cozy bus stops in Cornwall (left) and Manchester, England. And here you can really appreciate the level of comfort offered by a bus stop on Unst Island, Shetland, (this bus stop even used to have its own website): (images via) ------- Cute Japanese Bus Stops Some lovely fruit shapes: (images via) The stops were built for the Travel Expo show in 1990 with the intent to serve as an attractive gateway for travelers entering the Nagasaki Prefecture. According to the Isahaya City web site, the creators got the idea for these unusual shapes from the famous story of Cinderella where the carriage turns into a pumpkin. (images credit: 1, 2) Not all of them are fruit-shaped, there are also some really fishy designs: (image via) ------- Psychedelic Soviet Bus Stops This awesome tiled sea-creature bus stop is located in Abkhazia, close to Pitzunda (designed by the famous, or rather infamous, Georgian-Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli): (images credit: Maxim Karakulov, Privet Sochi, Julia) This kind of bus stop design creativity has been happening in these parts since the 1950s: These bus stops are not completely in the middle of nowhere, they are placed along the bus routes in Soviet Central Asia: in former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan - see more in this set (images credit: Christopher Herwig) Delapidated and very basic bus stop shelters can be seen in Armenia: (original unknown) Battling the winter in Yaroslavl, Russia: (image credit: Vitaly Sokolov) ------- Plenty of marketing stunts use bus stop locations () Here are some examples of guerilla marketing, done right: (images via) IKEA and Home Depot would certainly benefit from displaying their attractive furniture and building materials to a bus crowd "captive audience": (images via) This one is probably the winner (at least it's the most irresistible): ALL-YOU-CAN-POP BUBBLE WRAP ! - more info (image via) ------- Bus stop designs done right: bottom row - Seattle (left) and Praha, Czech Republic (right): (bottom right image via) Just horsing around, waiting for the right bus to come along... - (image credit: Wanderoos) And this bus stop seems to have already swallowed some customers (not that they seem to mind): Article by Avi Abrams, Dark Roasted Blend. CONTINUE TO "ELABORATE WATER PUMPS" -> Check out the rest of our "Fantastic Architecture" series