There, there, boys. It was the mid 1990s - the aftermath of the last recession - the architects in question had next to no work on, perhaps hunger was making them a little feverish. A lot of designers were discovering the movies at the time: probably because they had plenty of spare time, if not money, to spend in cinemas. But the outfit known as Allford Hall Monaghan Morris struck lucky. They kept Powell and Pressburger - or more accurately, the film's production designer Alfred Junge - in their heads as they designed their competition entry for a seemingly prosaic project: a bus station in Walsall. Then they beat 103 other entries to win the competition. And now, finally - having become very successful in the meantime - they have built it. It looks just like they wanted it to. Heavenly.

Nobody, of course, sniggers any more at the mention of Walsall. Not since this otherwise humdrum West Midlands town opened its world-class New Art Gallery in February. A tower-house for art, with access to the Tate's collections, that has drawn a very unprovincial 140,000 visitors so far. One hopes that a fair number of those visitors will now arrive and leave by bus, because they are treated nobly. Unlike those arriving by rail, who find the station buried within a nondescript shopping mall.

Walsall had a familiar problem: it had an unpleasant, down-at-heel bus station. Like a thousand such unlovely terminuses, it might have been designed specifically to make you feel second-class. The message was hardly subliminal: only losers took buses. Centro, the West Midlands public transport authority, had the good sense to see that if they wanted to change that perception, then they should have a bus station that spoke of a better world. Which was probably why they ended up with a version of heaven. If John Prescott is serious about making public transport more desirable, he should call in to take a look.