The evolving art piece is simply known as The East Side’s signature bus shelter with adjoining business shelter on Oakland and North Avenue. It’s easy to miss now that it’s set against the backdrop of looming new development projects, most recently the new 4-story mixed-use building right across the street. Mini donuts are a staple on the corner, with the latest operator Chubby's Drive Thru adding patio seating. The bus shelter is a step away from the entrance to the Oak Leaf Trail making for an easy bus to bike connection.
Designer James Donnelly has updated the bus shelter, a labor of love since designing the original structure more than a decade ago as Milwaukee’s first bus stop of its kind. The project was part of the new East Side BID’s streetscaping project.
Donnelly engineered an original and innovative pattern of bent steel panels that not only offer shelter, but sound off when hit by rain drops. This summer he quietly made changes to the wind panels. He replaced them with cut tree trunks from large fallen trees to reintroduce a natural character to the hardscape of a city street.
"Timbers have a strong but forgotten presence in public projects, because wood has been substituted for steel,” Donnelly said. “Wood speaks to the soul. The trade craft of mill work communicates to people through the hands of and value of skill and labor.”
Donnelly, the original architect of the project in 2001, said that updating the shelter with its compact size and highly visible public corner had become an obsessive effort out of his concern that “monocultural designs have become unquestioningly common in public places.” Instead, Donnelly said he prefers to use a mix of hand-made and industrial made objects and using a variety of processes that offer a traditional perspective of ‘shelter’ within a comtemporary context.
Read More