I Wouldn’t Mind Missing the Bus (8 Photos)

These bus stops have other ideas

A strawberry with a doorway, an armadillo-like roof, a giant orange jaw, a mosaic octopus and a shelter furnished like a tiny living room. These eight photos show how much imagination can fit around an everyday place to wait.

More: Love Waiting Here (14 Stops)

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🍓 Strawberry Bus Stop — Konagai, Japan 🇯🇵

A giant strawberry makes room for a doorway and a bench. Built for a 1990 travel expo, Konagai’s fruit-shaped shelters were inspired by Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage.

📷 Photo by STA3816 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Also cropped in the cover.

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🟨 Steintor — By Alessandro Mendini in Hannover, Germany 🇩🇪

Black-and-yellow checks climb the columns beneath a row of golden cones. This is Alessandro Mendini’s Steintor design.

📷 Photo by GeorgDerReisende / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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🍈 Melon Bus Stop — Konagai, Japan 🇯🇵

The melon version has a curved stem and a doorway cut into its patterned green shell. It belongs to the same set of 16 shelters in five fruit designs along Konagai’s roads.

📷 Photo by STA3816 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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🪑 Bobby’s Bus Shelter — Unst, Scotland, UK 🇬🇧

A chair, table, maps and curtains make this tiny shelter feel like a room someone cares for. Bobby’s Bus Shelter in Baltasound is known for its changing decorations; this photograph shows its 2016 makeover.

💡 History Fact: In 1995 the council removed the old shelter here as unsafe, and seven-year-old Bobby Macaulay wrote to The Shetland Times asking for a replacement. A new shelter went up a few weeks later and was named after him.

📷 Photo by Julian Paren — 2016 makeover of the well-known Baltasound Bus Shelter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

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🚌 Braunschweiger Platz — By Frank Gehry in Hannover, Germany 🇩🇪

Overlapping metal sheets curl over the shelter like an armadillo’s armor. Frank Gehry designed it for Hannover’s 1994 BUSSTOPS project.

💡 Project Fact: Gehry’s shelter is one of nine BUSSTOPS, each by a different designer, including Jasper Morrison, Ettore Sottsass and Massimo Iosa Ghini. The project was initiated by Stiftung Niedersachsen, the transit operator Üstra and Toto-Lotto Niedersachsen, with the aim of turning waiting time into a short rest in a special place.

📷 Photo by Christian A. Schröder (ChristianSchd) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Also cropped in the cover.

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🪵 Unterkrumbach Nord — By Ensamble Studio in Krumbach, Austria 🇦🇹

It looks like a stack of lumber with room to sit inside. Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa of Ensamble Studio took their cue from local timber-drying stacks, using layers of untreated boards.

💡 Project Fact: Krumbach’s cultural association launched the BUS:STOP project with seven international architects, who were offered a holiday in the Bregenzerwald instead of a typical fee. Each one partnered with a local architecture office that worked with the regional craft businesses building the shelters.

🔗 Visit Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa at Ensamble Studio.

📷 Photo by Austriantraveler / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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🐋 The Amazing Whale Jaw — By Maurice Nio in Hoofddorp, Netherlands 🇳🇱

The orange form curves around an opening big enough to frame the buses behind it. Maurice Nio’s “The Amazing Whale Jaw” combines a bus station with a piece of sculpture. Completed in 2003 beside the hospital in Hoofddorp, it is built from polystyrene foam and polyester.

📷 Photo by Alena Hanzlová / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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🐙 Octopus Bus Shelter — By Zurab Tsereteli in Gagra District, Abkhazia

Mosaic-covered arms arch over the entrances to this octopus-shaped shelter, one of the sea-themed bus stops Zurab Tsereteli designed around Pitsunda from the late 1960s. Photographed in 2011, it was already abandoned, with broken surfaces and plants growing around its base.

📷 Photo by karel291 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).