The international student competition inviting creative ways to renew the appeal of public transport during a global health crisis is now the subject of a book. It is available for free access today.

Reimagining Waiting for the Bus is an open access book edited by Carmela Cucuzzella, Jean-Pierre Chupin, Emmanuel Rondia and Sherif Goubran and published by Potential Architecture Books (Montreal, 2021).

This creative guide, the result of an international competition, is a synthesis of the best ideas in the form of a free resource aimed at stimulating citizen discussion and community group engagement around the improvement of small urban environments connected to bus stops.

This richly illustrated, educational guide presents ideas that encourage appreciation of urban spaces by emphasizing the importance of nature, art and design. Reimagining Waiting for the Bus invites citizens to think about creative approaches, neighborhood by neighborhood, bus stop by bus stop, that would energize these public spaces in an interactive, poetic, critical and meaningful way: shifting the immediate environment of bus stops from a merely functional spatiality to a multi-purpose spatiality.

This is not about redesigning the bus shelter, but about making waiting for the bus more pleasant, in various ways, encouraging citizens to use the bus instead of their car, all year round, including during hot summer days and long periods of freezing winter.

The ideas extracted from projects from many countries are not presented as solutions but as illustrated principles gathered in 5 vectors going from culture to social dimensions, from ecological concerns to technological innovations and, in general, to everything that can increase the feeling of well-being.

The result of a research and creation process, this guide aims to encourage citizens to take hold of these often neglected spaces in which waiting should be given all the attention necessary to enhance public transport.

2021 Reimagining the Experience of Public Transportation in a Post-pandemic Metropolis

• For all projects submitted: Canadian Competitions Catalogue
• For winning and mentioned projects: IDEAS-BE

81 teams of students from 16 countries and 4 continents participated in this ideas competition which asked for new ways to encourage and renew the experience of public transport in the wake of a global sanitary crisis. How can we open up avenues for redefining an enhanced relationship to urbanity through the sharing of public spaces?  The jury chose to reward 5 projects and gave 2 honorary mentions for exemplary ways of reimagining the experience of public transportation in a post-pandemic metropolis.

This competition was part of a joint research initiative.  Concordia University’s Chair in Integrated Design, Ecology and Sustainability for the Built Environment and the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence of the Université de Montréal worked together to mobilize the creativity of young designers of the built environment to stimulate the debate on new experiences of public transportation to enhance urban resilience.

The 2021 edition was organized in collaboration with the CRE-Montreal and the ARTM. The Conseil régional de l’environnement de Montréal (CRE-Montréal) promotes sustainable development for the city of Montréal. The Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM) plans, finances, organizes, and promotes public transit and paratransit services for the Montréal metropolitan region.

The proposals were judged anonymously by a jury composed of the following:

1. Emmanuel Rondia, Conseil régional de l’environnement de Montréal
2. Peter Fianu, Ville de Montréal
3. Marie-Pier Veillette, Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain
4. Izabel Amaral, Université Laurentienne et Université de Montréal
5. Sarah V. Doyon, Trajectoire Québec
6. Virginie Lasalle, Université de Montréal
7. Anne Cormier, Atelier Big City
8. Thomas Bernard Kenniff, Université du Québec à Montréal
9. Bechara Helal, Université de Montréal

Mr. Peter Fianu was unanimously named president of the jury, while Dr. Carmela Cucuzzella and Dr. Jean-Pierre Chupin, co-organisers of the competition, were named the competition advisors.

After two deliberation sessions, the jury decided to award 5 prizes ex aequo to the following 5 projects whose teams will each receive, without distinction of ranking, the sum of $1500 granted by the two organizing research chairs IDEAS-be and CRC-ACME. Some statistics before presenting the winners and honourable mentions:

• Number of participating countries: 16 (4 continents: Africa, America, Asia, Europe)
• Number of cities: 22
• Total number of students: 238
• Total number of teams: 81
• Total number of universities: 30

The program clearly specified that the competition was not about inventing new structures ex nihilo. In addition, the jury noted that many projects relied on conventional solutions, sometimes very contextual, without being formulated as a series of principles that could be adopted in different situations. This partly explains why the jury and the organizers insisted in the final choice on the expected balance between: 1 – evocative narrative, 2 – project elements, and 3 – formulation of principles. year round, even during the hot summer days and the long periods of extreme cold winters.

Only Moh Abdolreza, PhD student at Concordia University, had access to the list of team details, since this was an anonymously judged competition.

Below are extracts from the jury report:

Winners:

Sentiment Station proposed by Melisa Akma Sari (Indonesia).

Can public transportation and memorial practices be combined? The Sentiment Station project reinterprets transportation spaces as true public spaces. They offer an opportunity to enter other temporal dimensions especially while waiting for the bus, a time most often perceived as unproductive. Critical or poetic, this project is based on evocative principles that mobilize a commemorative aesthetic.

Détour proposed by Joëlle Tétreault, Catherine Juneau et Laetitia Bégin-Houde (Canada).

The jury was seduced by the clarity and strength of this anti-project. The proposal, entitled Détour, converts the rigidities of public transport, usually from station to predetermined station, into an unusual, indeterminate, unpredictable experience: getting on the bus without knowing where it will take you.

Commotion: Community in Motion proposed by Aulia Rahman Muhammad, Andika Raihan Muhammad et Firzal Muhammad Setia Nugraha (Indonesia).

In the Community in Motion project, the question of public space as a place of socialization and animation is confronted with that of efficient transport. By proposing thematic spaces, it meets multiple needs and offsets the impression of homogeneity often felt in public transport.

Integrated Metro Library proposed by Davi Sloman et Amir Hotter Yishay (Canada).

Ironically, but perfectly realistically, the Integrated Metro Library puts books into “circulation”. The conjunction of two programs, transportation and reading, seems simple on the surface. But this a mini public library and therefore a real public place: what some libraries sometimes struggle to embody.

Overtime proposed by Juliana Alexandrino Baraldi, Carolina Cipriano de Oliveira, Natália Chueiri (Brazil).

The project entitled Overtime constructs an inversion of the reality experienced in the underground of the metro. It responds to the need, often expressed by users, to maintain contact with the sky and with the outside world in the very interior underground spaces of the metro. The optical illusion would allow us to leave our phones behind for a few moments to look up instead.

Honorary Mentions:

e-Pus proposed by Man Zou / Jia Zishi (Canada)

The Opus all-inclusive card, reloadable directly from your phone, is an attractive idea for public transport users. This simple but effective supercharged Opus card unites the community of public transport users through the various services offered on the application.

Cubic proposed by Ana Beatriz Hierro Azevedo / Isabela Lopez Lourenção / Júlia Snege de Carvalho / Nicole Perruzzetto Bringel / Rebeca Martins Elias / Victor Oliveira de Souza Rogato (Brazil)

This proposal directly addresses the issues of an ongoing pandemic while seeking to not disrupt the necessary traffic flow at a bus stop. The modularity allows for different configurations of spaces and experiences.

Carmela Cucuzzella (IDEAS-BE Research Chair) Université Concordia
Carmela.cucuzzella@concordia.ca

Jean-Pierre Chupin (CRC-ACME Research Chair) Université de Montréal
Jean-pierre.chupin@umontreal.ca

Jean-Pierre Chupin, Morteza Hazbei and Karl-Antoine Pelchat wrote an article about architectural education strategies (AES) in sustainable buildings. Their research led them to conclude that there are three strategies for architectural education in buildings designed to disseminate knowledge in the field of sustainable architecture in Canada; the labeling approach, the experiential approach, and the iconic method. Architects are convinced that architectural communication forms can be used as a language accessible to non-experts. Future research may therefore challenge the very possibility of teaching through formal language and aesthetic features.

If you are interested in learning more, this publication is available for free on the Open Access Publications page of the CRC-ACME website.

Why write fiction when you are an architect? If the role of professionals in architecture is not, a priori, to write stories, some of them have a privileged relationship with literature. This is the case of Sergio Morales, a Quebec architect (co-founder of Chevalier Morales Architectes, a studio based in Montreal) and Pierre Blondel, a Belgian architect (founder of Pierre Blondel Architectes, a studio based in Ixelles). We went to meet them in order to better understand the place that writing occupies in their practice as designers.

If you wish to access this scientific post, it is available free of charge on the dedicated page of the CRC-ACME website, as well as a little further down on the home page.