Digbeth Coach Station

Client: National Express

with Stuart Mugridge, and Xtraweld. Collaborating with SBS Architects.

[2008-9]

A public art scoping exercise led to a boundary fence design.

.In the 19th century W and T Avery manufactured an assortment of weighing apparatus, including steelyards and ticket printing weighbridges. In 1929 the Birmingham and Midland Omnibus Company Ltd. opened a bus depot on the site, later becoming simply known as 'Midland Red'.

e design followed the ethos of 'opening up' the site, exposing industrial 'haunch' forms that echoed the interior of the previous station and 19th century engineering. The individual forms themselves balance on varying tipping points of physical and visual weight, whilst collectively creating a fence that induces particular senses of direction and movement. The lack of a horizontal component creates a sense of visual access through vertical gaps or slits, which also positively reinterpret glimpses of hidden workshops, factories and restricted land in the Digbeth area. In addition a lighting scheme augments the Midland ‘Red’, but also a sense of measurement and distance, influenced by the avoirdupois system.

 In effect, the fence became a series of related ideas and features, evident of an approach that valued user experience over integrated art 'object'.