1. In 1940 Barnes Wallis created a small scale replica of the Mohne Dam on the BRE site to trial out his famous bouncing bombs. The prototype still exists today.
2. BREEAM is the world first environmental scheme for buildings – Since its inception 20 years ago, over 818 943 homes and 22 972 buildings have been registered under the scheme.
3. Prince Charles’s Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment is currently building a house on the BRE Innovation Park that adopts an alternative natural approach to sustainable house building
4. BRE is one of the world’s top five centres of excellence for the built environment with expertise in virtually every area that relates to it.
Visit the BRE Trust Research Programme for more information
5. In 2007 BRE’s Innovation Park launched the world’s first volume build zero carbon house – the Kingspan Lighthouse. Click on the image below to find out more.
6. BRE conducted a series of tests for NASA to determine how fire would behave in a zero gravity environment
7. BRE has many wonderful and unique testing facilities on site; a structures lab that can fit a four storey flat inside and can simulate everything from a flood to an earthquake; a wind tunnel that has had many a television presenter blown to extremes; a burn hall that can accommodate a 9m tall fire; and an anechoic chamber that absorbs all sound allowing for no echo at all, an underground tube train and a plane that are used to test passenger air quality and the world’s largest timber library
8. The 1985 Front Room Fire film made by BRE for the Fire and Rescue Service led to a complete overhaul of the furniture industry and its approach to fire safety.
9. The Building Research Station (BRE’s former name) is referred to in Peter Wright’s infamous “Spycatcher” memoir. The book reveals that BRE developed a special quick drying plaster to enable spies to go into rooms, drill and insert bugs, then re-plaster so no-one would notice.