The City of Ventura Public Art Program, in collaboration with the Public Works Department, commissioned the bus transfer center, which is the first artist-designed public facility in Ventura. The primary public art component of the center is a bus shelter, constructed from shaped steel, which depicts a bus transforming into a home. The central concrete platform in the shape of a bus (see aerial slide) was also part of the artists design. The project was created by a multidisciplinary team with the goal of integrating the artist’s concept into a fully functional transit facility. Design team members include Jerry Butler and Robert Hawthorne of Boyle Engineering. The art fabrication studio La Paloma completed the fabrication of the shelter. Through his design Dennis Oppenheim strives to enliven and celebrate the experience of using public transportation. He explains, “Bus-Home deals with the metamorphosis of one image into another. In a kind of animated freeze frame, the bus slowly becomes a house. In this three-dimensional, pictorial equivalent of a journey, the journey consists of a swirling loop, a spiral. This work should be magical and hard to contemplate, as is often the case when one thing turns into another. I hope this work will also bring calm to especially young travelers, by showing a flow, and connection between where you came from and where you are going." The work provides visual stimulation to bus riders, other road users and mall pedestrians, and has also become an influential work of art visited by our city's residents, as well as international art connoisseurs.