It wasn't that many years ago that a bus stop was marked by a small sign attached to the most convenient utility pole. Today's rapid transit users in many Canadian cities can also find shelter from the weather in small structures at their bus stop.

Thus, this basic human need for shelter provided the impetus for the first national competition for students at Canadian Schools of Architecture. Conceived, developed and sponsored by the Steel Structures Education Foundation (SSEF), twenty teams of students from architectural schools across Canada focused their emerging talents on the task of designing, in steel, a structure for a space of no more than 7 metres in span. The contest, announced in October 2001, was adjudicated by a panel of four judges on May 11, 2002 at the Ontario Association of Architects building in Toronto.