Section 02 · Building Materials

From stone to engineered timber

Eleven material categories, each with a technical guide and a set of in-depth articles. All eleven — Wood, Steel, Bamboo, Lime, Concrete, Innovative Materials, Brick, Stone and Marble, Copper and Non-Ferrous Metals, Raw Earth and Glass — are now fully available in English.

Chapter · Materials

Concrete

From the Pantheon to ultra-performance UHPC mixes. 2,000 years of history, three technological revolutions, and the most-used material on Earth after water.

Sustainability 6.5/1010 variants · 6 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Stone and Marble

Carrara marble, Tivoli travertine, granite, basalt, tuff. Stone is the oldest building material — and the most durable.

Sustainability 6/109 variants · 6 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Steel

S235, Cor-Ten, stainless, tensile cables, corrugated sheet. From the structural frame to the building's skin: steel isn't one material, it's a family.

Sustainability 6.5/106 variants · 7 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Wood

Solid timber, GLULAM, CLT, LVL, acetylated Accoya®. Contemporary structural timber isn't your grandparents' wood — and timber skyscrapers already exist.

Sustainability 7.5/108 variants · 6 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Brick

Solid, hollow, face, thermal-block brick, terracotta, cotto. The oldest material in built architecture — still used today for excellent reasons.

Sustainability 7.75/107 variants · 6 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Glass in Architecture

Float, tempered, laminated, Low-E, structural, ETFE. Glass revolutionised the relationship between inside and outside — and keeps doing so.

Sustainability 6.25/108 variants · 8 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Copper and Non-Ferrous Metals

Patinated copper, VMZINC zinc-titanium, anodised aluminium, titanium. Metal skins that age with grace — or shine forever.

Sustainability 6/107 variants · 6 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Structural Bamboo

Guadua angustifolia, Moso, laminated bamboo. Strength close to steel, regrows in 5 years, sequesters CO₂. The most sustainable material almost no one uses in Europe.

Sustainability 7/106 variants · 6 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Lime and Traditional Plasters

Air lime, natural hydraulic lime NHL, lime putty, Venetian marmorino, cocciopesto. The oldest binder in the built world — and the most compatible with restoration.

Sustainability 7.75/106 variants · 6 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Raw Earth

Adobe, pisé, rammed earth, CEB, torchis. Near-zero embodied energy, regulates humidity, lasts millennia. The material of the future that's also the material of the past.

Sustainability 8.5/106 variants · 6 in-depth articles
Chapter · Materials

Innovative and Bio-Based Materials

Mycelium, self-healing concrete, aerogel, PCM, bacterial bio-bricks, 3D-printed raw earth. Experimental materials on their way out of the lab.

Sustainability 6/107 variants · 6 in-depth articles
Explore also: 🏛 History of Architecture 🗺 Architectural Travel (IT)