The Utility of Building Science

THE BUILDING RESEARCH station at Garston in the UK has recently celebrated its Golden Jubilee. The Central Bmldmg Research Institute in India is celebrating the twenty-fifth anmversary ofits founding, having been estabhshed, like most of the national bmldmg research institutes in the world, at about the time that BRS had completed its first twenty-five years. Such special anniversaries are often used as BRS has done, and as CBRI is doing, for a stock-taking of accomplishments and a reappraisal of objectives. Regardless of anniversaries, research institutes everywhere are increasingly under pressure to reconsider what they ought to be doing. There is a growing disenchantment with science in the world. Science for