Type: Public

Location: Kerala, India

Year: 2020

A good bus shelter is essential to any successful urban mass transit system. What constitutes "good," however, depends upon your point of view. From the perspective of the city agency responsible for its management, a good shelter has low maintenance requirements and is vandal-resistant. 

From the rider's point of view, an ideal shelter allows visibility and easy access to the bus, is comfortable and convenient, provides clear information, and is safe. 

The shelter can make waiting for a bus a pleasant and interesting experience! Unfortunately, many poorly designed shelters also exist. We aim to replace/ modify the existing bus shelters in Trivandrum, the capital city of Kerala.

CONCEPT

The form of the shelter is derived from the logo of Travancore (former princely state), The Shankh (Conch Shell).  

A shell is a 3d curved structure which resists load through its inherent curvature. A shell’s structural behaviour is derived directly from its form, thus when designing a shell-like structure, the fundamental consideration is the choice of geometry. This not only dictates the aesthetics but the overall efficiency and behaviour under the load of the structural system. The basis for curved geometry can be sculptural, geometric or defined by a natural physical process.

Conch Shells are formed in nature by growth at the shell’s free leading edge. Their increase in overall size is achieved purely from successive addition of material to one end only. 

A simple Conch Shell may be considered as a surface of revolution formed along a spiral path about the shell’s axis. The generating cross-section is of constant shape but increases in size by a constant ratio as the section sweeps the curve.