BPN Blog

Museum of Glass, Stourbridge

We are currently working with CDP and The British Glass Foundation on a funding bid to help restore the Stuart Crystal Works in Stourbridge and turn it in to a visitor attraction accommodating Stourbridge's prized glass collection, which is currently housed at Broadfield House Glass Museum in Kingswinford and in storage at Himley Hall.

It would feature an open courtyard with a striking light sculpture marking the spot where the White House Cone once stood and mirroring the Red House Glass Cone on the opposite side of the A491, which visitors would be able to safely cross by using underground tunnels linking the two sites.

‘Broadfield House is second only to the Corning Museum in New York where 85 per cent of the exhibits were made in Stourbridge’

www.stourbridgenews.co.uk/news/9465919.First_glimpse_of___5m_glass_museum_plan/

All of us at BPN would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas! We are making a donation this year towards the Birmingham Action for Blind People Charity's 2011 Christmas Appeal. Our donation could enable two children to attend one of their residential breaks. For more information on Action for Blind People please visit www.actionforblindpeople.org.uk

Image: The seasonally modified 'Majestic Elk', painted by Dean Melbourne on our meeting room wall.

With the new lounge extension at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre starting in a few weeks we headed down to site this morning to watch a sample of one of the piers being built on site. We weren't there long as the pier took less than 1 hour to construct. The pier was constructed to test the 'Porotherm' masonry walling system, which has never been used to construct such a thick structural wall in the UK before. The construction of the pier was incredibly simple and proved a big success with the clients and building control inspector.

'Porotherm'  is a clay block walling system that is highly sustainable. The blocks are made from recycled material and require no additional thermal insulation due to the air gaps in the blocks. http://www.porotherm.co.uk/App/Maps/Wb-uk/Porotherm/index.html

We will be updating the blog as the project processes.

At first glance, it could be any ordinary road on an October day, covered with thousands of fallen leaves. Except there's something distinctly out-of-the-ordinary about this. During last week's unprecedented high temperatures leaves fell onto a newly laid sticky, non-slip section of tarmac, the leaves were then pressed into the tarmac by cars driving on top of them to create a lasting beautiful carpet of leaves.

If only this freak event could happen more often on our city streets!