About Wall

A wall is a structure that defines an area, carries a load, or provides shelter or security. There are many kinds of walls such as defensive walls in fortification, walls of buildings which are a fundamental part of the superstructure or which separate the spaces in buildings sections sometimes for the purpose of fire safety, walls which hold back earth called retaining walls, offer protection from oceans such as a seawall or river as a levee. Permanent, solid fences are walls, and border barriers between countries are sometimes walls.

Building walls purposes are to support roofs, floors and ceilings, enclose a space as part of the building envelope, along with a roof to give buildings form, and to provide shelter and security. In addition, the wall may house various types of utilities such as electrical wiring or plumbing. Wall construction falls into two basic categories: framed walls or mass-walls. In framed walls the load is transferred to the foundation through posts, columns or studs. Framed walls most often have three or more separate components: the structural elements (such as 2×4 studs in a house wall), insulation, and finish elements or surfaces (such as drywall or panelling). Mass-walls are of a solid material including masonry, concrete including slipform stonemasonry, log building, cordwood construction, adobe, rammed earth, cob, earthbag construction, bottles, tin cans, straw-bale construction, and ice.

Exterior walls may be built with moisture control gaps called a cavity wall, rainscreen.

Building walls frequently become works of art, externally and internally, such as when featuring mosaic work or when murals are painted on them; or as design foci when they exhibit textures or painted finishes for effect.