First Bus
We were delivered a brief from Made Brave looking for a solution to the craziest of sketches posing a seemingly impossible question
“Can we put a full size double decker bus inside a box so that it looks like a toy?”
“…and can we have it delivered at 9pm to George Square and ready for the general public by 7am the following morning?”
We don’t like to say no.
The answer is nearly always yes as we don’t like to say no. The solution to the brief was a little more tricky.
We needed to be able to bring the solution on-site. Put it together around a brand new £350k bus. Make it look like a toy box. It needed to include a clear plastic window so you could see the bus.
We couldn’t use any fixings that would damage the surface of the Square but we needed to ensure that it was safe and wouldn’t blow away given that we were creating what was in effect, a massive sail.
The viewing window presented another problem given that the client wanted this to be optically clear and free from any structural components. And bus sized! This was also included on the ‘lid’ of the box just to add to the complexity.
We built the structure twice off-site in the weeks running up to the event. We trial-fitted the box ‘skin’ and changed the clear plastic window material during that process.
The pre-launch builds gave us an idea of the time involved and allowed us to work out what parts could be prefabricated. It also allowed us to assemble much of the structure into larger sections which we delivered to site on a low loader on the night.
None of this preparation took into account the weather on the night of the build. 30+mph winds with the addition of heavy rain from around midnight made the build ever more challenging but we managed it and all parties involved were delighted with the finished item.
The bus launch was a huge success. The interest was enormous and the concept has since been nominated for several awards.
