Materials and Construction Basics

Wood is renewable, lightweight, and has excellent tensile strength along its grain, making it ideal for framing, trusses, and increasingly for mass-timber structures like cross-laminated timber (CLT) buildings up to 18 stories tall. Stone and masonry (brick, block) excel in compression but are heavy and labor-intensive. Traditional stone masonry created durable structures—many Roman aqueducts still stand after two millennia—but modern masonry relies on reinforced concrete-block walls with steel rebar for seismic resistance.