About our archive

A unique legacy

The BRE Trust is a charitable organisation that works to advance built environment knowledge and communication for public benefit, by supporting research, innovation and education. As BRE's owner, the Trust is the custodian of nearly a century of research and guidance from leading built environment experts. This extraordinary legacy provides a unique history of the development of almost every aspect of buildings and construction in the UK.

Opening the archive

In 2010 the BRE Trust set up a project to make a large part of this printed archive available online for public use. The prices paid for the documents will fund further work through the Trust.

The archive presents a fascinating historical record and background to today's industry, but is not intended to provide guidance on current built environment projects. Much of the information in the documents has been superseded by more recent research and standards. They include:

Current Papers - 720 research project summaries published from 1968-1983
Digests - 130 reviews of current building technologies published from 1948-1966
Overseas Building Notes - 125 guidance notes on low-technology building methods suited to conditions in many developing countries, published from 1961-1994.

Review of BRE publications

In 2016, the BRE Trust completed a review of all of the BRE publications available from the BRE Bookshop and other digital platforms. This amounted to about 1,400 unique publications reviewed by BRE experts to ensure that they were relevant. Following this exercise the Trust has archived about 500 titles since some of the information in them has been superseded by more recent research and standards.

While we hope that you find these newly archived documents informative and useful, the BRE Group does not accept any responsibility whatsoever for any loss or damage, including - without limitation - indirect or consequential loss or damage arising from use, or loss of use, of data or profits arising out of, or in connection with, the use of these documents.

Both sets of archived documents can be accessed from the main BRE Bookshop and are clearly marked as such in the search and product pages.