Light and well-being, even at the bus stop

In Sweden there are bus stops that are real ‘Station of Being’, where time is not lost, but enjoyed.

Think about making people feel good even outside the home, during normal everyday life, while they go to work and move to the city, by public transport. It is a vision that not all public administrations have, they are more busy  balancing the books than thinking about the well-being of citizens that goes beyond essential services.

For architects, the ‘well-being’ is instead something central in the design of any space, which is even just a bus stop. In Umeå, Sweden, an architecture and design studio, the Dutch from Rombout Frieling Lab, in collaboration with the Swedish Research Institutes, has conceived and created a prototype of an intelligent bus stop that uses light sources and sound effects to alert the passengers waiting for the arrival and destination of the vehicles.

These Station of Being are focused on waiting people, they are designed to let people wait and relax, thanks to light and sound, and to protect them from the arctic wind that blows in the colder months. There is no need to constantly look outside to see the arriving vehicle and to understand where it is headed, that is what intelligent stop management takes care of. In the meantime, you can stay sheltered and think, read or simply rest leaning against the particular wooden shelters that descend from above in this station defined, by its creators, ‘experiential’.

The lighting system placed on the ceiling of the station, and the audible warnings, serve to create different luminous atmospheres depending on the bus that is approaching. The qualities of the sounds and lights emitted indicate the destination of the incoming vehicle.

Those waiting moments at the stops are no longer wasted time, but become quality time, a healthy break of reconnection with oneself. The materials with which this Station of Being is made are, obviously for a country like Sweden, eco-sustainable and the buses that pass through Umeå are already electric, therefore rather silent and respectful of the environment due to less pollution.