Wonder Walls: Colouring in the city

The exterior of the MyCiti bus station in Gardens, Cape Town, is vividly decorated with bright and fantastical murals.

Inside, two beautiful serpentine benches form a centrepiece.

Mosaics depict a landscape of flowers and nature, reminiscent of the benches in Barcelona's Parc Güell that Antoni Gaudí designed around 1914.

Ronald Haiden, the engineer in charge of MyCiti stations, confirms Gaudi's influence in the design.

Ceramic artist Lovell Friedman created the benches, while the outside murals were done by Wesley van Eeden and an artist working under the pseudonym ''Freddy Sam".

The MyCiti art initiative, which has seen most of the main stations being adorned by artists, owes a lot to Haiden, who allocated small public art budgets for these stations.

Haiden worked with the hands-on expertise of Roger van Wyk, a specialist in public art.

Van Wyk, who facilitated these works, is sensitive about having the ''right art in the right place".

In this case the challenge is to create work that connects with passers-by as well as with commuters.

For the Gardens station, for example, he and Haiden decided the theme should be a riff on the concept of garden itself, so the space took on a figurative, visually poetic initiative under the brushes of the two muralists.

Many of the MyCiti stations have transparent artworks applied to windows. Sue Williamson decorated the airport station using transparent material. Along the Table View route, David Hlongwane, Sanjin Muftic, Tony Coetzee and Arlene Amaler-Raviv feature.

The large Civic Centre station hosts a number of large artworks. There's a cheerful, cartoonist cityscape by Julia Anastasopoulos, a ''map" by Strijdom van der Merwe and an extensive relief mural about the bicycle by Garfield Taylor. Heath Nash is working on ''slogans".

Well-known Cape mural artists are also getting space. Faith47 has designed the Atlantis station, and Mark 1One's work is up at Omaramba.

Thami Mbenekazi has a cheerful bunch of characters at Killarney, and Ofentse Letebele has smiles all over Dunoon's windows.

The recently opened central Adderley station will display archive photos of the street.

The process of public art at the MyCiti stations is ongoing, so commuters are in for a joyride as the plan rolls out.

For artists, of course, this a great project to show what they can do, and to direct a visual dialogue with the public.

Van Wyk and Haiden are doing a good job, and the City of Cape Town deserves plenty of kudos for agreeing that 1% of the stations' budget should be used for aesthetic enhancement.