A wall (from Old English weall) is a vertical structure, usually solid, that defines and sometimes protects an area. Most commonly, a wall delineates a building and supports its superstructure, separates space in buildings into sections, or protects or delineates a space in the open air. There are three principal types of structural walls: building walls, exterior boundary walls, and retaining walls.
Building walls have one main purpose: to support roofs and ceilings. Such walls most often have three or more separate components. In today's construction, a building wall will usually have the structural elements (such as 2×4 studs in a house wall), insulation, and finish elements or surface (such as drywall or panelling). In addition, the wall may house various types of electrical wiring or plumbing. Electrical outlets are usually mounted in walls.
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.
On a ship, the walls separating compartments are termed "bulkheads", whilst the thinner walls separating cabins are termed "partitions".
In architecture and civil engineering, the term curtain wall refers to the facade of a building which is not load-bearing but functions as decoration, finish, front, face, or history preservation.
Read more about Wall: Partition Wall, Movable Partitions, Boundary Walls, Separation Walls, Retaining Walls, Shared Walls, Portable Walls, Etymology, Walls in Popular Culture, Physiological Wall
Other articles related to "wall":
... He described it as being "like all the towns hereabouts, is surrounded by a mud wall, and the gateways are surmounted by the usual pagoda-like towers ... There is a musketry wall round outside the main wall, but it is now almost in ruins ... Inside the wall are some yamens, but only a few houses ...
... a slightly projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall ... In discussing Leon Battista Alberti's use of pilasters, which Alberti reintroduced into wall-architecture, Rudolf Wittkower wrote, "The pilaster is the logical transformation of the column for the decoration of a ... in "low-relief" or flattened against the wall ...
... As of the census of 2000, there were 818 people, 349 households, and 212 families residing in Wall ... The population density was 404.2 people per square mile (156.4/km²) ...
... When the Berlin Wall was being built in August 1961, many who lived in these buildings frantically jumped from their windows before the buildings could be evacuated and their windows bricked up ... one of the first refugee tunnels dug underneath the Berlin wall ... A section of the wall has been reconstructed near the spot on Bernauer Straße (since 2001 part of the locality of Gesundbrunnen) where the tunnel ended ...
... The term "wall of sound" first appeared in print in the New York Times on 22 June 1884, in a description of Richard Wagner's redesigned Nibelungen ... Mystic Space, because he intends that here the invisible 'wall of music,' proceeding from the invisible orchestra, shall separate the real (that is the audience ... The term "Wall of Sound" was also used to describe the enormous public address system designed by Owsley Stanley specifically for the Grateful Dead's live performances circa 1974 ...
Famous quotes containing the word wall:
“When all this is over, you know what I’m going to do? I’m gonna get married, gonna have about six kids. I’ll line ‘em up against the wall and tell them what it was like here in Burma. If they don’t cry, I’ll beat the hell out of ‘em.”
—Samuel Fuller, U.S. screenwriter, and Milton Sperling. Samuel Fuller. Barney, Merrill’s Marauders (1962)
“What harm cause not those huge draughts or pictures which wanton youth with chalk or coals draw in each passage, wall or stairs of our great houses, whence a cruel contempt of our natural store is bred in them?”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)