![]() The further Herwig cycled, the wilder the bus stops became, with expressive cantilevered rooftops flaring above tapering concrete columns, rendered in pinks and ochres or daring barrel vaults creating a series of porches on either side of the main shelter. They were often raised up on a plinth and accessed by a little set of steps, bringing a sense of occasion to the mundane activity of waiting for the bus. The first were open-fronted concrete boxes painted in pastel colours, with the look of a doll’s house. Within the first 50km of Lithuania, I noticed these peculiar bus stops everywhere.” “It wasn’t until I got into the Baltic countries,” he says, “that they jumped out at me. ![]() A particular roadside feature began to catch his eye, and so began an obsessive quest. “Taking a bike on Ryanair,” he explains, “would have cost four times the price of a seat.” As he set off, he gave himself a challenge: to photograph something interesting every hour of the way. The project began in 2002, when Herwig decided to cycle from London to Stockholm, to live with his girlfriend. From a rusting corrugated tin roof above a lonely bench in Armenia, to the heaving ceramic confections along the Abkhazian coast, every architectural style and aesthetic whim is explored, limited only by the designer’s imagination and whatever materials they could lay their hands on. Soviet Bus Stops, by Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig with a foreword by Meades, is brimming with pyramids and arches, domes and vaults, improbable structural feats that often appear to be held together with not much more than several coats of thickly daubed paint. As such, they were opportunities for local sculptors, architects and builders to flex their creative muscles – and boy did they let rip. Just as 18th-century English follies were often try-outs for new architectural styles, some of these roadside pavilions may have been experiments for bigger things. ![]()
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