Norwich's controversial £5m bus station has been named as one of the best designed stations in the world by a leading design magazine - despite past problems with its leaky roof.

The city centre station was voted as the ninth best designed station in the world by Design Curial magazine.

A team of international researchers helped put the list together after considering a number of factors including design, creativity and how the structure fitted with the surroundings.

Katherine Houston, web editor at Design Curial, finalised the top ten and said it was the unique shape of the bus station in Norwich that made it stand out. 'The thing that really pushed Norwich into the top ten was the uniqueness of the leaf shape roof,' she said. 'When you look at it from the ground it looks like any other but the roof is something special.'

Bus stations in Slough and Stoke also made the list but it was Krumbach a station in Austria which scooped the top prize.

The £5m bus station in Norwich was hailed as a state of the art landmark when it opened in 2005 and it won the SCALA Civic Building of the Year Award in 2006, with its distinctive steel canopy roof.

But, in June 2012, water poured through the roof into the main building, containing the ticket office, café and toilets. Norfolk County Council had to shut the station for its contractors to replace the flexible roof with a corrugated steel sheet.

It left the ticket office shut for more than a month and the bus station itself was later closed for a week in 2013 while £220,000 of repairs could be carried out.

More recently, there have been overcrowding fears at the bus station.The bus station was designed by NPS Property Consultants, an 'arms-length' company of the county council, with Bluestone the principal contractor.