Building Research Station Research Articles

English architecture in 1963: a newly rediscovered view from Germany

This article provides an English translation of an unpublished German typescript found in the archive of the architect Julius Posener in the Akademie der Kunst, Berlin. Posener, a professor of architectural history at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HBK), travelled with a colleague and fifteen students to England for a fortnight in March 1963. They met several prominent architects, saw a wide selection of their current and recently completed works, and attended events at the Architectural Association school. The typescript is an account of the trip that he wrote up from notes in his diary on 29 March, two days after their return. Posener, who had previously spent almost a decade teaching architecture in London, proves to have been a sympathetic observer of the scene, eager to compare and contrast what he saw in England with contemporary work in Germany; his account evokes subtle disagreements between himself and his colleague on conceptual and historical points, and gives us an insight into the day-to-day workings of Denys Lasdun’s office, the Architectural Association, the London County Council, and the Building Research Station in Garston.

William Allen and the ‘scientific Outlook’ in Architectural Education, 1936–66

ABSTRACTModern architects in the inter-war period were enthused by the potential of science and technology to inform their work. The educational dimension of this changing mindset was first recognised and explored at the Bauhaus in Germany, the experiments of which were to inspire the teaching of architecture in schools across Europe and the United States, particularly after the end of the second world war. In the United Kingdom, the quest for a more science-based approach to architectural education had an equally important source in the work of the government’s Building Research Station (BRS). From the early 1930s, the BRS initiated steps to familiarise architectural students with its methodologies, and in the postwar years such concerns were channelled into a comprehensive pedagogical reform agenda that culminated in the landmark Oxford Conference on Architectural Education of 1958. This article argues that it was William Allen (1914–98), rather than better-known figures such as Leslie Martin and Richard Llewelyn-Davies, who was the driving force behind this agenda. As chief architect to the BRS, Allen took up a pivotal position at the intersection of building science and professional practice. The article shows how, over the course of two decades, Allen used the institutional machinery of both the BRS and the Royal Institute of British Architects to inject a scientific outlook into the training of architects. His success in doing so positions Allen as a major figure in British post-war architecture, even though his own attempt to implement his vision as principal of the Architectural Association (1961–65) ended in failure.

Thermal comfort and climatic design in the tropics: an historical critique

This paper explores how climatic design for the tropics was socio-technically constructed at its moment of inception in the mid-twentieth century by two of its best known proponents: George Atkinson at the Tropical Building Division, Building Research Station and Otto Koenigsberger at the Department of Tropical Studies, the Architectural Association.I argue that undergirding Atkinson’s construction of climatic design for the tropics was a mechanistic and reductive understanding of thermal comfort based on the research done by the air-conditioning industry in the United States in the early twentieth century. Not only did the reductive understanding of thermal comfort ignore local cultural norms and social practices in maintaining comfort, it also indirectly helped to further metropolitan interests in the tropics. In the case of Koenigsberger’s construction of climatic design, I show that he was influenced by the mid-twentieth century researchers in hot-climate physiology. These researchers combined nineteenth-century colonial medical ideas of the tropics as a torrid zone with the early twentieth-century industrial physiologists’ understanding of the correlation between environmental conditions of thermal stress and low productivity. They assumed that labourers in the tropics worked under perpetual thermal stress and became easily fatigued, thus hindering the socio-economic development of the tropics.By foregrounding the entanglements between climate and economy, comfort and development, and nature and culture, this paper follows the Anthropocene thesis that invalidates the ontological distinction between human culture and nature. In doing so, this paper also complicates the recent call for a return to climatic design and its low-energy passive means of cooling.

Houses of Experiment: Modern Housing and the Will to Laboratorization

AbstractThis article adds historical and geographical specificity to the link between city building and laboratorization processes. It does so by way of the example of housing in mid‐twentieth‐century Britain. Housing provision at this time saw an intensification of the relationship between architectural design and science by way of the emergent field of building science as well as new social‐science studies of householder satisfaction. The article focuses on two examples of these housing sciences, tracing their role in the production of British modern housing. The first example focuses on a set of experiments conducted on ventilation and heating at Britain's Building Research Station. The second example examines the social science of a post‐occupancy study of multi‐storey flats in Glasgow. The article argues that mid‐twentieth‐century housing construction and provision was structured in and through a laboratory logic that had a complex geography and temporality. In the sciences of housing conducted during this period there is a conflation and hybridization of the space of the laboratory, the site of the house and the action of the experiment.

인체충돌시 바닥의 안전성에 관한 시험방법간 연관성 분석

성능중심의 건축재료설계 수행과정에서 어떤 성능에 대한 시험 방법이 복수 존재할 경우 최적 대안 선택에 필요한 시험방법 DB 기반구축의 일환으로, 인체충돌시 바닥의 안전성을 예로서 시험방법간의 연관성을 분석하였다. 8종류의 바닥시험체를 대상으로 EN 1177의 한계하강높이 시험과 JIS A 6519의 헤드모델 시험을 적용한 결과, 주로 바닥의 강성(쿠션) 크기에 따라 각 시험방법의 적용상 한계가 있다는 것을 알 수 있었다. 또한 시험을 통해 측정하는 물리량 단위가 같은 경우라도 시험방법간 연관성이 불분명한 상태에서는 각각의 물리량이 호환되지 않는다는 것을 알수 있었다. Since the study of building performance design was first undertaken by Building Research Station in 1930s, the results of such study has been reported from many parts of the world, building construction codes and standards have been revised based on performance in advanced nations as well in Korea, and various performance certification systems are in operation. The purpose of this study is to build a database of performance certification systems to investigate the co-relationship of various test methods related to the same test items. As test methods for case study, we selected test methods involving collision of the human body. Through analysis of Critical fall height test of EN 1177 and Head Model test of JIS A 6519 about 8 species of floor test-bodies, it was found that there are limits of application in terms of the depth and strength of cushion. Furthermore, although the measured physical parameters are the same, when the co-relationship between test methods is uncertain, the various physical parameters may not be compatible with the results.

Houses of paper and brown cardboard: Neville Chamberlain and the establishment of the Building Research Station at Garston in 1925

Neville Chamberlain’s significance in the history of twentieth‐century planning is well known. One key episode, however, has been overlooked: his role in the 1925 expansion and transfer to permanent premises of the Building Research Station (BRS), later known as the Building Research Establishment (BRE). The BRS had been established originally in 1921 but with temporary staff in temporary premises. In its post‐1925 form, the BRS was to have a world‐wide impact, both as a model for similar organizations in other countries and in the development of building science as a discipline. The paper shows how the espousal of new methods of construction formed a key part of the new approach to housing developed by Chamberlain as part of the ‘New Conservatism’ in 1924; how the promotion of new methods was inserted by Chamberlain into the 1924 Housing Act (Wheatley Act) introduced by the minority Labour government in 1924; and how, following the Conservatives’ return to power in November 1924, the BRS was transformed into something much larger in order to deliver ‘the Chamberlain programme’ of research for municipal housing. As such, the paper suggests that state‐funded building research formed the talisman of the social‐democratic confluence over state housing that emerged for the first time in Britain in the mid‐1920s.

Field and laboratory investigations of the clay tills at the test bed site at the Building Research Establishment, Garston, Hertfordshire

Abstract Detailed investigations have been made of the clay tills on a site located at the Building Research Station about 30km NW of central London. Inspection of the soil macrofabric suggests that two advances of the ice occurred in this area. Results from insitu tests using cone penetrometers, pressuremeters, 100mm diameter screw plate tests, 292 and 865 mm diameter deep insitu loading tests, and laboratory tests are given. The results obtained from different types of tests are compared against the background of the modes of deposition, post depositional conditions and the variations in the soil fabric down the soil profile.

Discomfort caused by wide-source glare

We report here on experiments to measure subjective response to intense light, or glare caused by a wide source. We have investigated three glare indices: the Building Research Station glare index; the CIE glare index and the Cornell daylight glare index. We have also examined the glare vote and have proposed a new glare evaluation scale, as well as asking the subject to vote on the condition's acceptability. The Cornell formula most accurately predicts glare discomfort, but it is found to be inadequate for a range of wide-source glare conditions. Both the discomfort sensation vote and the glare vote which we proposed correlate well with the percentage of subjects dissatisfied when looking directly at the light source.

Trees and soil recovery

Introduction As long ago as 18411 it was known that trees can cause movements of adjacent ground if the soil contains appreciable quantities of clay. However, it is in comparatively recent times that researchers in the UK have attempted to understand how the process of tree‐induced ground volume change comes about. In the first instance, studies were inspired at the Building Research Station, immediately following the Second World War, by investigations of claims for compensation for bomb damage that revealed the close proximity of trees to buildings that were remote from locations where bombs had fallen. These studies concentrated on establishing the ability of vegetation to dry the ground, and on determining the depth at which building foundations should be placed to prevent damaging movements occurring through the action of light vegetation. This early work also pointed out the risks of subsidence from tree root activity and the need for deeper, piled foundations when building close to trees. Though several BRS publications were issued, the problem was not widely appreciated.

MARKUP: an expert assistant for marking up bibliographic data

Among the routine tasks carried out in a special library such as the one at Building Research Station (BRS), there are a number which depend on the application of special or expert knowledge by the professional staff, using heuristic judgements which, at first sight, appear difficult to codify as precise rules. An attempt has been made to incorporate the expertise required for one of these tasks into a program functioning as a simple type of ‘expert assistant’ which might be the basis of an expert system.

Preserving the truly ancient monuments

The author, who now works at the Building Research Station, the Technion, Israel, draws largely upon his previous experience in the USSR to describe the in situ treatment of ancient loess clay structures with the use of gas‐fired infra‐red radiant panels. This, he maintains, is the most feasible method of preserving crumbling monuments and archaeological remains, by giving the original raw material the properties of burnt clay. Control of temperature rise is crucial.

Research perspective: The UK

The director of the UK Building Research Establishment here outlines how the oldest building research station in the world was merged with other laboratories in 1972 to become the BRE, responsible to the Department of the Environment and working primarily as ‘contractors’ for ‘customers’ within DOE. Despite a multiplicity of tasks in five different research stations, organised through 18 divisions and six departments, staff numbers have been reduced by some 40 percent in the past decade. Recent major inter‐discipline studies have prompted the use of ‘matrix management’.

Development of Protractors for Calculating the Effects of Daylight from Clear Skies

A procedure is described for calculating Interior daylight illumination from clear skies using a protractor approach. The proposed procedure closely parallels the one used by the British Building Research Station in preparing daylight protractors for calculating daylight from overcast skies. Building on this work, a computer program was developed which used the CIE clear sky function to execute the numerous calculations needed to construct the clear sky protractors. The proposed procedure was validated against the Quicklite I daylighting program, the results of which suggest a close correlation between the Protractor procedure and Quicklite I. Thus, an accurate, simple and relatively fast procedure for calculating daylight has been presented which enables measurements to be made directly from architectural drawings.

New sensing system for borehole extensometers

The authors describe an altered version of the borehole extensometer developed by the Building Research Station for observing ground displacements in foundation engineering. The original extensometer used a circular magnet as a marker and a reed switch as sensor. The same components are also used in the system described in this technical note, the distinction from the original one being related to the signal transmission when the reed switch is closed by the magnet. The new sensor system uses an oscillator as signal source and this simplifies the reading method, since electrical cables can be avoided. (TRRL)

Device for automatic logging of volume change in large scale triaxial tests. Technical note : Watts, K S Geotech Test J, V3, N1, March 1980, P41–44

Large-scale (230-mm-diameter) triaxial compression tests are carried out as part of the research work of the Geotechnics Division of the Building Research Station, United Kingdom. It was considered desirable to monitor the tests by using automatic data logging facilities. A new device was designed and built to monitor sample volume change. The gage has been used in a series of tests on rock-fill samples. The device is described and its accuracy and performance are discussed. (Author)

BRE low-energy-house laboratories—examples of the use of heat Pumps

SYNOPSIS The low-energy-house laboratories at the Building Research Station incorporate various techniques for reducing energy consumption for space and water heating. They have been built to high standards of insulation, but the main experimental features concern the eight heat pumps. most of which have been purpose designed for their particular applications. In this paper the houses and their heating systems are described briefly and. whilst these are only experiments, it is expected that some may indicate cost-effective ways in which heat pumps may be employed in both new and existing construction in the future.

A study of the effects of thermal capacity on domestic heating energy requirements

This paper presents the results of a simplified analytical method of assessing the effects of variation in building thermal capacity on heating energy requirements. The calculation method, which can be applied manually, introduces approximations but gives a broad insight into the effects of thermal capacity. This is in contrast to detailed computer models which provide more accurate results but usually relate to particular situations. The analytical method adopted is based on the admittance procedure developed at the Building Research Station and recommended by the CIBS. The method does not take account of diurnal variations in external temperature or of the response times of different heating systems. The effects of such approximations are not considered to be significant in this study. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the thermal behaviour of the present housing stock rather than to make recommendations about houses as passive solar collectors. In situations where heating is provided on an intermittent basis and there are no incidental heat gains, application of the admittance procedure indicates that structures of higher thermal capacity require a greater amount of energy for heating than those of lower thermal capacity. In addition to this must be considered the effects of utilisation of incidental gains, in particular solar gains, and the imposition of a minimum acceptable internal temperature. These two factors are discussed in detail with particular reference to different heating schedules. It is concluded that in certain intermittent heating situations where thermal insulation standards are high, increasing thermal capacity does not lead to a significant increase in energy consumption.

A Device for Automatic Logging of Volume Change in Large Scale Triaxial Tests

Abstract Large-scale (230-mm-diameter) triaxial compression tests are carried out as part of the research work of the Geotechnics Division of the Building Research Station, United Kingdom. It was considered desirable to monitor the tests by using automatic data logging facilities. A new device was designed and built to monitor sample volume change. The gage has been used in a series of tests on rock-fill samples. The device is described and its accuracy and performance are discussed.

BUILDING RELATED HOME ACCIDENTS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

In the period August 1975 to July 1977 the Building Research Station undertook a pilot study to obtain data on home accidents in co‐operation with the Watford General Hospital. Subject to precautions regarding medical confidentiality, information was recorded on patients who attended the Accident and Emergency Department of the hospital following an accident in or around a dwelling.In order to facilitate comparison with data on fatalities, use was made of the International Classification of Diseases ‘External Cause of Injury’ system to categorize accident events. It was found that the four main types of non‐fatal accident were falls, accidents caused by cutting or piercing instruments, by striking against or being struck by objects, and by hot substances and steam. The study also showed that building features and services might rank relatively highly in terms of the frequency with which they become involved as agents in accidents when compared to other common household items.

DISCUSSION. APPLICATION OF GEOTECHNICS TO THE SOLUTION OF ENGINEERING PROBLEMS - ESSENTIAL PRELIMINARY STEPS TO RELATE THE STRUCTURE TO THE SOIL WHICH PROVIDES ITS SUPPORT.

Keywords BUILDING RESEARCH STATION, KENCHINGTON LITTLE, BRS APPLICATIONS, GEOTECHNICS, SOLUTIONS, ENGINEERING, PROBLEMS, STRUCTURES, SOILS, SUPPORTS, PROJECTS, FOUNDATIONS, DESIGN, PROFILES, BEDS, PARTINGS, SAND, STRATA, RESPONSES, INTERACTION, GEOLOGY, SITE INVESTIGATION... Show All