In raw or painted concrete, Made of metal, wood, glass, plastic… Portuguese bus shelters do not all seem to come from the same mould, nor from the same designer or architect. This is what we realize when we open the book. Design of contemporary bus stops (PT) By Etienne Bouet. During a trip through Portugal, this artist with multiple practices (photography, drawing, graphics, music, etc.) noticed the amazing architectural abundance, both in styles and billing, of a very modest object.
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To unknown bus shelters
Simple visual observation She will become a real curiosity over the course of her journey. He quickly noticed that these bus stops had no stop names, no advertising signs, hardly any signage, and almost no mention of a line. However, upon closer inspection, it appears that some of these delicate structures, no matter how old, are regularly subject to renovations, modifications or even repairs.
Artist Etienne Bouet.
This is non-uniformity What is most surprising is that the design of these objects does not appear to be governed by any industrial process intended to simplify their manufacture. But perhaps our French mind is also conditioned by the fact that a French company has a virtual monopoly in France on the manufacture of this type of general equipment and thus prints a kind of trademark? But here, in Portugal, it seems that industrialization is left to the free will of each municipality.
” Selection of materials Its implementation is guided by issues of simplicity and consistency“, explains Etienne Bouet. Metal and concrete are found throughout the area and form the basis of the network. The most common and at the same time the most basic is made of sheet metal. The basic version has a square-section frame and a sheet metal roof and walls, like secondary buildings of houses such as garages.. »
Information that seems essential to us is often missing: station name, line routes, passing times, etc. © Étienne Bouet
” From ordinary design to extraordinary design“, according to Etienne Bouet
Only in space At a distance of about twenty kilometers, the photographer goes so far as to identify 15 different specimens, from all eras and all styles, but they never refer to any folkloric language. In other words, it is impossible to discover specifically Portuguese heritage. He came to say that in the past he had rarely observed such inconsistency in pre-simplistic modular production. If he counted the number of cross-references, the list would likely reach 200.
The book “Designing Contemporary Bus Stops” by Étienne Bouet, in Portugal, points out a great diversity of forms of humble everyday objects and bus shelters © Étienne Bouet
” With this official pluralism In bus stops, we progress from ordinary to extraordinary design, sometimes with structures designed with more complex elements, which tend towards architecture. During a bus trip in Portugal, you can travel from a Brutalist-style concrete bus shelter to a 1970s-era one in metal structures and plexiglass bubbles. »
There are pictures in the book We don't have any human presence, and we don't see any buses there. Buses that Etienne Bouet would never encounter on the roads during his journey. The layout, which requires rotating the book 90 degrees to place it in Italian format, works a bit like a catalog of shapes. We discover these microstructures in their environment and in their simplicity with their dual functions.
Sometimes, Portuguese bus shelters are reduced to a strict minimum. © Etienne Bouet
That being the receiving structure – Shelter – for potential travelers waiting for the bus to arrive on time, due to it being a prominent landmark in the landscape that accurately indicates where to wait, or simply highlighting the fact that the bus is actually passing on that route. ” To be consistent with the spirit of these microarchitectures, I wanted a work that was modest, small in scale, and easy to handle. “Jamil,” a large book, would not have served the editorial project either », concludes author and photographer Etienne Bouet.
> “Design of Contemporary Bus Stops (PT)”, by Etienne Bouet, Paragem Editions, 240 x 165 mm, 48 pages, bound, 2 detachable editions, €19.
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