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26 October 2020
The Station of Being, an innovative bus station at Umeå University created as part of the EU funded RUGGEDISED project, has been nominated for the Beazley Designs of the Year 2020 award, which is presented by the London Design Museum. The Station of Being is one of three nominees in the transport category.
- This is really big. Just being nominated for such a great award is a feather in the cap, both for those who have worked with the stop's creation and design, but also for Umeå municipality, that want to invest in this type of innovative and innovative solutions, says Carina Aschan, development strategist at Umeå municipality and City Coordinator of the RUGGEDISED project.
The London Design Museum writes, among other things, that the Station of Being with its welcoming and de-stressing environment encourages travellers to use public transport more often. The stop's smart roof uses light and sound to tell travellers when a bus is approaching and each bus line has its own unique sound. The wooden pods hanging down from the roof rotate automatically to protect travellers from the weather and to create opportunities for human interaction.
The ‘Station of Being’ was inaugurated a year ago and is deemed to have functioned well since. The innovate design, in which audio and light intermingle combined with the separation of waiting zone and boarding zone enables a faster boarding and thus contributes to saving energy for the electric buses in the oftentimes cold climate.
The bus stop, which is part of the RUGGEDISED project, was designed by the Dutch designer Rombout Frieling in collaboration with the research institute RISE, Umeå.
The Beazley Designs of the Year 2020 competition will be decided by a voting procedure that runs until 10 November. A prize jury then decides who will be the winners in the various categories, as well as the winners of the competition as a whole.
Carina Aschan says that the Station of Being attracts a lot of attention in the municipality's international network. There have been several booked visits from cities around Europe, including representatives of the RUGGEDISED Fellow city of Gdansk in Poland, which already visited to find inspiration for the development of their public transportation network.
Jeroen Peeters, senior design researcher at RISE Sweden, who worked on the development of Station of Being, believes that the London Design Museum is right in its assessment.
- The award jury really confirms the image we ourselves have that the design gives the traveller time to just be and that it provides protection from the weather and wind, while giving a face to the modern and sustainable public transport of the future, says Jeroen Peeters.
Read more about the award nomination
Vote for the Smart Solution ‘Station of Being’.