Despite having designed and delivered a range of transportation projects in difficult environments and for disadvantaged communities in the UK, very little had prepared us for the design challenges encountered when we designed the new 20 mile Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route to link the Central Business Districts of Masaka and Suleja with the residential suburbs in the city of Abuja, Nigeria via the extensive residential suburbs in between.
By way of background, the city of Abuja was and still is undergoing significant urban and rural regeneration, underpinned by secured funding from the World Bank. This investment has seen a number of development schemes being implemented to develop the City into an international base and the direct focus on multi modal transport connectivity and mass access to reliable cheap travel was seen as the driver that would ensure a successful transition into a metropolitan city of the future. The new BRT in Abuja would provide the framework for economic growth in key sectors like construction as well as providing a much needed and integrated public transport system for the City. The challenge however was how a centralised BRT mass transit solution could provide a significantly better and more reliable alternative to the peoples dependency on run down cars, vans and mopeds and curtail with all the residual disruption and environmental problems that had built up over the years. Having been part of the successful tender winning team in 2016, we took the role of lead architects and landscape designers in CPCS’s multi-disciplinary design team and began design work ion the BRT in 2017 and concluded our commission in 2020. Tasked with developing the routewide design language for all architectural, landscape and visual aspects of the new bus network, there were two key parts to our role:
Our designs for the hubs themselves are further referenced in the later section on ‘C) Mobility hubs’ however on the first role, we carried out routewide feasibility and concept studies to analyse pedestrian flows, access requirements, weak points, risks and opportunities in the network and establish the environmental impacts that the route and hubs would have. A pivotal part of our role was to understand how the BRT route would align with the Cities developing masterplan both in the present and in the future. We therefore researched, analysed and designed in a range of considerations such as the physical, geographical, social and cultural make up of the City and how key stakeholders, Government bodies, investors, businesses and housing could be best supported by the BRT. A key driver in this analysis was understanding how the route would be used, when and by whom. As some of the site photos on the right show, the everyday hustle and bustle of Abujan life was somewhat chaotic and the immediate issue was how the functionality and order of a new BRT could indeed be accommodated. The highway itself would be separated from public traffic and consist of two BRT lanes, one operational and one passing in the event of a bus breakdown. At the 23 hub locations, an 18 metre long siding was required with platforms at 1 metre above road level to be at grade with the bus floor and provide the traveller with level access. We analysed these and many other prescriptive operational features and how they could be integrated within the physical realities of urban and rural Abuja, realities exacerbated by the environmental forces of extreme climatic conditions which sees Nigeria experience harsh dry summers and wet seasons.
This analysis then fed into our design work, for instance an initial evaluation of how people would travel to the hubs and by what means informed the orientation of the hubs and in turn how the hubs sat in their immediate surroundings. This in turn manifested itself in us linking the landscaping and public realm with the routewide alignment to provide rain gardens and places that travellers could identify as beacons on their journey. It was this holistic routewide understanding of all the physical, human and environmental issues that allowed us to develop the overall architectural and landscape language of the route and its constituent parts as an integrated network whilst allowing the individual hubs to have a sense of place and respond to their specific environments.
The brief called for two specific types of hub – a standard and a large – each with differing specifications according to their location. The design of the hubs had to respond to multiple design principles including the differing urban and rural geographical locations, complex operational requirements and the prevailing two part hot and dry and then very wet annual climatic conditions. The 23 hubs popped up at key stages along the 20 mile route and were designed as interim bus stops which were located in strategic locations to suit pedestrian demand, structural capacity, ease of access, visibility and cost. Each hub was to be part of the routewide design language whilst having their own sense of location and place.
To do this, we designed the hubs as modular hybrid structures that could be most prefabricated offsite and transported to each of their locations where they would be finished in situ. Each would have a gateline; ticket machines; seating; lighting; heating; wayfinding; network maps; help points; communication systems and notification displays and a place of safety for the staff. They were to be secure places for people to wait; fully accessible to all and well ventilated and a place to shelter from the sun in the winters and then dry in the wet season. Many of these design features require an electrical supply which is not always a given in Nigeria either in terms of getting supplies to the point of use or its consistency when there. Abuja experiences regular power outages so working with the electrical engineers, we designed integrated solar panels that would store power for use during such power cuts.
The seasonal extremes and security had to be carefully integrated into the design of the external and internal materials. We therefore opted for a perforated metal cladding system for the hubs which would maintain transparency between out and in as well allowing natural ventilation through passive airflow movements. The lightness of a metal cladding system also made it ideal for modular prefabrication and transportation whilst maintaining the robustness that the hubs needed in both urban and rural geographical locations. It also reduced the need for glazing in windows, often a costly material to source in Nigeria and materials that could be easily vandalised or removed and sold. We were advised that maintenance would be eratic, so lightweight yet firmly secure internal materials such as seating and ceiling systems that were robust, hard to break and even harder to remove were developed.
With the material pallet set, the focus moved onto place setting which was achieved by different colours, geometries and landscape which would allow each hub to have their own identity. Trees were carefully positioned externally to create better shade, the hubs geometries addressed geographical differences in site locations and wider public realm and landscaping strategies along the meridian were created to safeguard space for expansion and potential extension of the route.