Baltimore Corner Stops

In Baltimore there is a big stigma on using the bus as your main

form of transportation. It is often seen as a last resort: your only

choice of transport, because you don’t have the money to buy

your own car. I dislike this dissing of people using the bus! So my

goal within this project would be to make the whole experience of

catching a bus a more dignified event.

The places where you have to wait on the bus emphasize the stigma.

These bus stops are very depressing. In most cases, the stop is just

a pole in the ground with a trashcan full of garbage next to it. Here,

you can wait for the bus. My conclusion is that these places have

absolutely no soul and are certainly not dignified. In my opinion,

the bus stops are the real problem in keeping this stigma alive.

I started to rethink and explore how The use of the bus stop can be

expanded into one building, together with the local community and

entrepreneurs, to serve more public purposes. Different type of bus

stop building typologies are now imaginable and the potential uses

are boundless.

The building design is based on the dimensions of a typical

Baltimore row house, quite narrow but very deep. The front of the

building is always designed to serve as space for the bus stop. The

area in the back of the building and the second floor are reserved for

different types of facilities. The floor plans are very flexible to serve

different needs. The building is made with wood constructions.

The power of this building is that it’s part of a new Baltimore wide

network that will create corner stops throughout the whole city.

These buildings function as anchor points that connect different

neighborhoods in Baltimore. It creates a new kind of collectivity

that can help with de-stigmatizing the bus.

Tijme Scholten // Academie van Bouwkunst // Juni 2019