Walsall Bus Station – Masterplanning Projects – Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

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Walsall Bus Station reorders a site through a series of interventions that filter movement and civilise the experience of bus travel. The urban landmark, won in international competition, is composed of an elliptical concrete canopy that hovers some eight metres above the bus lanes. In gathering the entire programme under its singular 80m by 45m perimeter, the canopy makes space for a new town square to serve the nearby St Paul’s Church. Crisply-detailed glass screens enclose the bus islands, protecting pedestrians from traffic fumes and making circulation instantly legible. A two-storey volume – occupying the south-west portion of the canopy’s underside – holds offices, waiting rooms and ticket hall, the whole addressing the square. A formerly dispiriting urban backwater dominated by traffic and an original brief for multiple bus islands with separate glass canopies have both been reinvented into a coherent object set within a dignified public realm.