British designer Thomas Heatherwick has updated the look of London’s trademark busses – which date back half a century – to give them a modern edge.
‘It has been 50 years since a bus was last designed and commissioned specifically for London,’ Heatherwick says. ‘It has been an honour […] to take an integrated approach and design everything that you see and experience from the outside down to the tiniest details of the interior.’
The new busses are eco-friendly; when compared with a current diesel bus, Heatherwick’s design emits less than half of both carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen levels.
Prototypes are currently in use in London, with seven more busses scheduled to enter service on 20 February. Keen to ride? The busses are being used to serve route 38 between Victoria and Hackney.
Photos courtesy Iwan Baan.
Text by Lydia Parafianowicz.
via frame magazine
Thomas HeatherwickWeb
