Designing the 2018 Bus Hub Problem from First Principles
My first attempt at the 2018 bus passenger hub station problem did not work. Looking back, I could see the real gap: I had listened to several instructors, but I had never once carried a full scheme from start to finish. So I stopped trying to feel my way through the dark and decided to rebuild the exercise by following a few different teaching approaches, this time from zero.
The first thing to drop was hindsight thinking. After seeing an answer, it is easy to say that a certain room obviously belongs here and a certain entrance obviously belongs there. That is not design thinking. Design thinking has to move from local decisions to the whole plan. I had planned to write this up in two parts, but after reviewing two detailed solutions I split it into three. The methods differ enough that the useful work is to find what they share and turn it into my own process.
Route logic comes before room placement
One solution started with the master plan. After identifying the task and drawing requirements, it used the site plan and design requirements to establish a macro framework: where the building entrances and exits should be, and roughly where the various site elements belong. On my first pass, when I fixed the station service area and the outbound area, I began with coordination with the second floor and with grouping food waste in one place. That led me to put the station service area on the east and the outbound area on the west. The west also had a pedestrian plaza, which seemed convenient for gathering and dispersal.
The reviewed solution worked in the opposite direction: it located the functional zones by vehicle routes. Passengers from the north enter from the west and leave from the east. Operating vehicles on the south side drop passengers off on the east and pick them up on the west. To make dispersal easier, the solution placed the outbound area on the east. Passengers getting off could walk out and reach the car parking lot directly; passengers continuing by other transport would leave through the second floor.
For room layout, the same solution began with important room nodes and grouped rooms with the same function into blocks before assigning grid cells. The ticket hall and ticket office, for example, were analyzed together, and the combined area determined how many cells they needed. The first and second floors had a large area difference, so the station service area on the ground floor used a courtyard. The courtyard counted only on the first floor, not on the second, and it provided daylight and ventilation. This addressed a problem I had run into: the station service area felt too large, while several rooms could not get light or air. A courtyard separated by a corridor still works technically with glazing and other measures.
The solution also allowed rooms from the same zone to sit in different locations. It accepted trial and error: place a room, test it, adjust it, and use leftover positions for stairs. Stairs should be on the outer edge. If necessary, sacrifice the perfect size of some rooms by making them smaller or larger. Circulation should stay smooth and preferably orthogonal.
The lesson here is that a design must follow how the building is used. Rooms that are short of area can be reduced somewhat; areas that exceed the requirement can be absorbed by an atrium or similar space. The key is internal logic and basic usability—enough to pass. The reviewed solution was not perfect either. Rooms from the same zone were scattered, and in the station service area the office circulation crossed passenger circulation, causing some interference. In an exam, when there is no better option, finishing the scheme is the best move. A dispersed zone can still work as an independent zone if partitions separate it; it is only grouped under one heading because the functions are related. Another reviewed solution handled this more elegantly, but it also had flaws. A scheme should not chase absolute perfection.
Clear zones, then account for traffic space
Another teaching approach stressed from the start that 2018 was different from earlier years. On the master plan, the priorities were: keep flows from interfering with one another; make transfer and dispersal convenient; get the orientation of each functional element right; position vehicle entrances and exits more than 70 m from the road centerline; keep the internal parking count of 6 + 1 in one area. From a usability standpoint, I was not fully convinced by that last point: if the station service area is on the west, internal staff still have to walk a distance after parking. The surroundings and the building also interact, generating flows that help determine the column grid. The plaza should connect to the road to form a loop, but the road should not be drawn directly across the plaza.
For the scheme, the first step was to compare the area table with the grid. The first and second floors differ by 800 m². Subtract the 640 m² rest hall and 160 m² remains, about 2.5 grid cells, which can be considered for an atrium and daylight. The zoning principles were: clear zones, simple spaces, high recognizability; people-oriented design; shorter walking distances while maintaining passenger safety; and attention to connections between functional zones. Entrances, exits, and other functional elements then had to be fixed in each direction.
This solution and the previous one were broadly similar, but some local moves could be refined. Since the outbound area was placed on the east, the door from the waiting hall should also be on the east rather than next to the ticket hall. If the goal is to shorten passenger walking, the ticket hall and the ticket gate entry should be adjacent. The waiting hall toilets should sit next to the mother-and-baby room and the outbound area toilets; the shop could swap places with them.
Reviewing these schemes also exposed a mistake of mine. When I placed the stairs in the outbound area, I left an awkward gap and could not think what to put there. The intensive course made the point that surplus space can be handled with wider or narrower stairs and one or more elevators. That solves a difficulty I have had with traffic spaces. Surplus area can also be absorbed by entrance foyers, corridors, and other circulation elements, which looks generous and orderly instead of wasteful. Required spaces such as the foyer, outbound hall, and transfer hall should generally be treated as rooms rather than as pure circulation, though there is flexibility when conditions demand it; a hall can also function as a traffic hub.
Make transport the primary problem
The third solution addressed the main controversy directly: should the outbound area be east or west? It recommended east. If the outbound area were west, arriving vehicles would first go west to drop passengers and then return east to pick them up, and the traffic flows would conflict. Different building types have different priorities. For a transport building, the first task is to solve transport and serve passengers; station service staff are secondary. That also answered a question I had about internal staff parking and then walking west to work, which would mix pedestrian and vehicle flows. Looking back, the exam question may not have considered that point thoroughly, but it is not worth over-discussing. In the exam, a complete scheme is already a good result. There is no 100 percent answer, only an answer that is internally consistent.
This solution also had practical reading and drafting techniques. Turn text information into diagrams while reading. If a police duty room connects to the transfer hall, internal area, waiting hall, and ticket hall, it sits at a four-way junction; sketch it immediately. Use room areas to set the grid, and check the interface with adjacent buildings. If an adjacent building has fixed dimensions, the grid may need a variable span. The earlier solutions did this with the transfer hall so that it matched the 9 m connecting passage shown on the master plan. A grid of 8 × 9 = 72 m², multiplied by 11, gives 792 m², close enough to the required 800 m². The same instructor also described a network-style reading method: keep the area table in view, check a room's size whenever the text mentions it, estimate where it might go, and mark rooms with daylight or ventilation requirements. Group rooms with the same or closely related functions to prepare for counting grid cells. Hub rooms should be placed first. Do not leave too much blank space on the master plan; when no program element fits, use planting.
The third scheme was not very different from the first two, so the useful notes were in the details. When predicting grid dimensions, combine them with room areas. If a required area is not an ideal grid number, a small deviation can be rounded to an ideal number: a room required at 28 m² can be considered at 24 or 30 m² and adjusted to the standard grid.
Master-plan annotations are rarely redundant. The exam is concise, and provided elements should be used, though some elements are there to enrich the drawing and should not be over-interpreted. In a 2024 problem, some candidates thought the surrounding buildings formed a C-shape, so the scheme should echo that shape. One instructor thought that was overthinking. Even if the premise was wrong, the final scheme showed that this observation could become a key to breaking the problem.
In the third scheme, the second-floor office circulation was C-shaped, unlike the loop-shaped circulation in the first two schemes. From a use standpoint, the loop is more convenient: an office in the corner can reach the transfer hall directly without a detour.
The three approaches did not produce one perfect plan. What they did produce was a sharper sense of where the real decisions lie: start from vehicle routes, use actual spatial devices to account for area differences, and finish a coherent scheme before polishing details.