This book treats a subject that is of interest to a wide range of people with various relationships to the designing and constructing of buildings. There is at any given time a great mass of information on these topics which may be accessed for applica­ tion to the many tasks of designers, builders, suppliers, and others. The enormity of this information resource is at once reassuring to those who regularly encounter needs for it, and overwhelming to just about everyone who needs to figure out how to use it. This book relates the topic of building construction to the basic problems of building design. The basic assumption here is that the need to design precedes the need to build, and that real concern for how to build comes from a desire to build something. This is the normal process of development for designers and others who start from the point of desiring a building and then proceed to determine what it should be. Intense concern for specific consideration of building materials, systems, and details of construction thus emerges at a later stage of design, typically after the general form, size, and essential nature of the building are already proposed.