Birmingham City turns hospital bricks into Powerhouse stadium asset
Birmingham City have acquired one million reclaimed bricks from the former City Hospital to use in the club’s planned 62,000-capacity Powerhouse stadium, tying a major regeneration project to the city’s industrial and civic heritage.
Birmingham City have bought one million reclaimed bricks from the former City Hospital for use in the club’s planned Powerhouse stadium and wider Sports Quarter development.The bricks have been cleaned, sorted and restored by specialists after being removed during the hospital’s closure and decommissioning.Birmingham City said: “The reuse of the bricks in The Powerhouse marks a new phase for materials that have been present through more than a century of change in Birmingham.“The development will return the bricks to the site where they were first made, preserving a link between the city's industrial past and its current regeneration plans.”The reclaimed material will be used across the new stadium, including the 12 chimney-style towers planned as a visual reference to Birmingham’s industrial heritage.The Powerhouse is expected to have a capacity of 62,000 and forms the centrepiece of Birmingham City’s proposed Sports Quarter, a wider regeneration scheme designed to accommodate football, entertainment and other large-scale events.The brick reuse programme gives the project an additional sustainability and placemaking element by incorporating existing local materials into a new commercial and sporting development.City Hospital opened in the late 19th Century and was originally known as Birmingham Workhouse Infirmary before becoming Dudley Road Hospital in 1912.It joined the NHS in 1948 and remained in operation until 2024, serving the city for more than 130 years.The original bricks were manufactured at Adderley Park Brickworks, with more than one million used during the hospital’s construction.A record of how the bricks were manufactured, stored, transported and eventually incorporated into the new stadium is also expected to form part of the Powerhouse development.The initiative adds a heritage dimension to a project intended to reshape Birmingham City’s physical and commercial base, with the new stadium designed to provide substantially greater capacity and event potential than the club’s current home.By reusing material from one of Birmingham’s historic civic buildings, the club is also seeking to embed the new venue more closely into the city’s wider regeneration story rather than treating it as a standalone football development.