An organisation for building research had been proposed as early as 1917 when the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) appointed a Building Materials Research Committee to investigate the suitability of a number of building materials and methods of construction for use in new housing after the war. In 1921, the Building Research Station was established in Acton, West London as part of the DSIR's Buildings Research (Materials and Construction) Board, later known as the Buildings Research Board. In 1925, it moved to Garston near Watford.

The station carried out research into all building materials and methods of construction with the aims of advancing efficiency and economy in building and allied branches of civil engineering. The work of the station expanded and developed up to and after the Second World War: in 1949 a Scottish Branch was established at Thornton Hall, near Glasgow; and in 1959 a colonial liaison organisation (established in 1948), became the station's Tropical Division.

In 1965 the Building Research Board was dissolved and the research station was transferred to the Ministry of Technology. In 1967 it passed to the Ministry of Public Building and Works, and in 1970 to the Department of the Environment, before folding into the Buildings Research Establishment in 1972.