1. Any man-made structure used or intended for supporting or sheltering any use or continuous occupancy, or
   2. An act of construction

Buildings come in a wide amount of shapes and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, to land prices, ground conditions, specific uses and aesthetic reasons.

Buildings serve several needs of society – primarily as shelter from weather and as general living space, to provide privacy, to store belongings and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the human habitat into the inside (a place of comfort and safety) and the outside (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful). Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or canvasess of artistic expression. In recent years, interest in sustainable planning and building practices has also become part of the design process of many new buildings.

Source: Wikipedia

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Building materials can be generally categorized into two sources, natural and synthetic. Natural building materials are those that are unprocessed or minimally processed by industry, such as lumber or glass. Synthetic materials are made in industrial settings after much human manipulations, such as plastics and petroleum based paints. Both have their uses.

Mud, stone, and fibrous plants are the most basic building materials, aside from tents made of flexible materials such as cloth or skins. People all over the world have used these three materials together to create homes to suit their local weather conditions. In general stone and/or brush are used as basic structural components in these buildings, while mud is used to fill in the space between, acting as a type of concrete and insulation.

Source: Wikipedia

Fibre cement is a composite material made of sand, cement and cellulose fibers. In appearance fibre cement cladding most often consists of overlapping horizontal boards, imitating wooden cladding, clapboard and imitation shingles. Fiber cement siding is also manufactured in a sheet form and is used not only as cladding but is also commonly used as a soffit / eave lining and as a tile underlay on decks and in bathrooms.

Fiber cement cladding is not only used as an exterior cladding, it can also be utilised as a substitute for timber fascias and barge boards in high fire areas. Fibre cement cladding is a very heavy product and requires two people to carry the uncut sheets. Thin fibre cement cladding is fragile before installation and must be handled carefully; it is prone to chipping and breakage if improperly handled.

Source: Wikipedia

Drywall is also commonly known as gypsum board, wallboard, plasterboard (USA,UK, Ireland, Australia), Gibraltar board or gib (New Zealand – GIB being a trademark of Winstone Wallboards), rock lath, Sheetrock (a trademark of United States Gypsum Company), gyproc (Canada, Australia, UK), pladur (Spain – after the Pladur brand), rigips (Germany and Central Europe – after the Rigips brand), alçıpan in Turkey, or simply board.

A drywall (gypsum wallboard) panel is made of a paper liner wrapped around an inner core made primarily from gypsum plaster, the semi-hydrous form of calcium sulfate (CaSO4·½ H2O). The raw gypsum, CaSO4·2 H2O, (mined or obtained from flue gas desulfurization (FGD)) must be calcined before use. Kettle or Flash calciners typically use natural gas today. The plaster is mixed with fiber (typically paper and/or fiberglass), plasticizer, foaming agent, potash as an accelerator, EDTA, starch or other chelate as a retarder, various additives that increase mildew and fire resistance (fiberglass or vermiculite), wax emulsion for lower water absorption and water. This is then formed by sandwiching a core of wet gypsum between two sheets of heavy paper or fiberglass mats. When the core sets and is dried in a large drying chamber, the sandwich becomes rigid and strong enough for use as a building material.

Drying chambers typically use natural gas today. To dry 1 MSF (1,000 square feet) of wallboard, between 1.75-2.49 million BTU is required. Depending on plant efficiency and energy costs, 25% to 45% of drywall cost today is related to energy, primarily natural gas. This is the main reason why organic dispersants/plasticisers are used i.e. to reduce the amount of water to produce gypsum slurry flow during wallboard manufacture.

Source: Wikipedia