#MusBuilding

The theme this month on culturethemes.blogspot.co.uk/ is Museum Buildings and objects relating to architecture, it is an opportunity for museums to share their surroundings or architecture items they have in their collections on Twitter.


MoDiP occupies a space in the AUB's library and we can't claim to be in any sort of grand building but the interior had a rather lovely spruce up over the summer vacation time.

The new configuration for our downstairs display area does look very smart.

Our architectural strength lies within our collection.  The first object I would like to show is a set of roofing slates which, of course, are made of a plastics material making them lighter causing less stress on the roof structure and yet looking just like the real thing.

These slates (AIBDC : 006037.1) are on display as part of our current exhibition Is that plastic? Skeuomorphs and metaphors in design, and were also part of an exhibition entitled Substitute: animal vegetable mineral

We all need to be thinking about keeping our homes warm and energy efficient.  One way to do this is to keep the loft insulation up to the recommended depth.  The insulation below is made of recycled PET bottles so gets double green points.  It featured in our Encore! re:formed plastics exhibition.

AIBDC : 005906

The following images show examples of plastics used within the building process.  Firstly, here is some exterior cladding from the 1960s.

BXL : 0504.2

And secondly, Plastazote being used a sound proofing beneath flooring.

BXL : 0182

The last two pictures might not be for those of your who have vertigo.  Here Plastazote is used in the construction of a bridge.

BXL : 0193.1

 This seems perfectly reasonable until you see the next image...

BXL : 0193.2

... I am not sure that wearing a hard hat will help you very much if you were to fall off the edge of this bridge.  We do not have the dates for when these images were taken but I am glad that the safety of construction workers has moved forward since then.

Other museums and museum visitors will be sharing their buildings and architecture on Twitter today - find out more by searching #MusBuilding or following @Culturethemes
Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)