Imagine a future for doomed bus station

Campaigners wishing to save Preston’s doomed Bus Station are inviting 
people to join them to come up with alternative ideas for the building’s future.

Arts organisation Gate 81, who believe the Brutalist monument should be preserved, are to hold a day-long workshop to generate realistic proposals to give the building and its surrounding area a viable use, on Saturday May 11.

From 8.30am until 7pm, this event will run somewhere on or near the transport hub at the location yet to be announced.

A spokesman for the Gate 81 group, so named because the Bus Station has 80 “gates” or bus stopping points, said: “Preston Council has voted ‘in principle’ to demolish the building and replace it with a surface car park.

“There are many of us who believe that the building should be preserved and creatively adapted to serve the city.

“No design experience needed, only an active, creative interest in Preston Bus Station and its interaction with you and with the city.

“If youre passionate about helping shape the Bus Station, if you work and live here and you want to add your voice and get involved in urban design processes, if you are an architect, artist, designer or developer, anywhere in the world, please join us to imagine a positive future for the building.

“This collective and collaborative event will aim to generate proposals for a viable and realisable future for the Preston Bus Station building and the surrounding area.”

At the event, architects, artists, producers and 
academics – including Uclan man Kevin Rhowbottom and Stella Hall, the director of Preston Guild 2012 – will speak on subjects and situations which are connected or have a bearing on the bus station’s fate.

And visitors can get involved in hands-on open workshops.

Maps, models, drawing and model-making equipment, printing facilities will all be supplied.

Refreshments will be on offer at the event but participants will need to provide themselves with lunch.

More details will be 
announced soon.

Tickets are free but must be booked in advance through: reimagine-preston-bus-station-efbevent.eventbrite.co.uk/