Industrial

Varna Bus station is located in the
geometric center of town, near a large roundabout between two main boulevards – Vasil Levski and Vladislav Varnenchik boulevards.

The high permeability of both boulevards provides quickest and shortest access for people from all residential areas of the town, and also a good connection to the Airport and Railway station.

The company managing the old Varna bus station for more than 20 years has constructed the building with private investment. Investor’s idea was to build the new building right next to the old one, which could have continued its’ work during construction, in order to avoid Varna remaining without a bus station.

The bus station has 12 sectors for arriving and departing buses and 35 parking spaces for waiting buses and vans.
The new building’s size is similar to the old, although the layout is different, the biggest difference being the ratio of the outside to the inside waiting room.
It is a result of the change in the behavior of travelers over the years. The investor discovered they spend less and less time in the building and usually even come directly to the bus stop just before its arrival.

This is a result of many factors, one being the online ticketing, which has eliminated the usual early arrival to wait in line. Long layovers to connect with another bus are also becoming less common, due to the increasing supply of transport services and better coordination between carriers. Therefore the project’s highlight is the covered outdoor waiting room, fully visible directly from the road, intended to help people better orient where they are going.

Another priority we’ve set is that the building ensures the safety of passengers at any time of the day. It was important that there were no dark, separated and hidden spaces.

Visor’s large height on the outer platform, as well as the rich glazing of the interior parts of the building, allow all the spaces passengers pass by to be covered at a glance.

In addition to an indoor and outdoor waiting room, the bus station also has a doctor’s office, a room for mothers with kids, a shopping center and a café, and they all have their own access, as well as offices for carriers, right in front of the bus stops.

The construction is mixed with reinforced concrete columns and a metal visor, the shape of which is suitable for mounting solar panels

Infrastructure Bulgaria Awards 2016 – First prize in the ” Urban Environment” category special prize for architectural impact

In 2014 we received an invitation from our colleagues from “Ingconsult Project” to join a consortium to design a roundabout. Our expectations were that the task was to develop  projects for the paths and the gardens within the inside circumference of the roundabout. However, as we moved deeper into the project,  we discovered that we had much more freedom to make more fundamental changes to the environment  and thereby solve some problems. The first task we set ourselves was to avoid breaking the green strip between the two lanes of Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard: this was used by the local citizens as a park and as a pleasant walking route to the Danube River  This strip is not wide, but the pedestrian walkways are separated  from the road by a green area of tall trees, benches and even sculptures: this route is used by those on foot and by cyclists.

In order to achieve our objective, we decided to build an underpass below the roundabout as smoothly as possible by constructing  two ramps (for pedestrians and for cyclists) with attractive contours to emphasize the feeling of a park. The other important pedestrian axis connects the new sports hall and a small town square which includes a garden. In this case we have chosen a different, more orthogonal concept. We have broadened the staircase as much as possible and integrated a ramp for disabled people. Our first aim was to accommodate the large groups of people who occasionally gather for sporting events, and secondly we aimed to make it tier extension of the two squares so that at other times, the space could then  used for recreation and even more, for performances. In this axis our development was restricted  by an large existing  underground collector that determined the shape of the staircase in front of the sports hall.