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 funds 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 Much of the information in the documents has been superseded by more recent research and standards.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 
• Defect Action Sheets – 144 notes published between May 1982 and March 1990

To include these publications in your search list, click the box ‘Show historic publications’ on the Bookshop search results page.

Review of BRE publications

In 2016, the BRE Trust completed a review of all 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 Following this exercise the Trust has archived about 500 titles since some of the information in them has been superseded by more recent research and standards.

These documents are automatically included in the search list without the need to click the historic publications box, and they are labelled as ‘Archive’.

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.