ABSTRACT
The development and understanding of building materials has generally received much less attention in the last few decades compared to sophisticated analysis and design procedures. The latter is much more exciting, and often considered intellectual, whereas the former is labelled as mundane and experimental. Probably one area where the building materials technology has been much neglected is in the realm of housing. The human habitat has become an almost intractable world problem. It is only when one realises that housing is as much a problem for the developed societies as for the developing countries of the Third World, and that some six hundred million houses need to be built before the end of the century if every family in the world is to have a roof over its head, that the enormity of the problem, and of the challenge to engineers and architects, dawns on all of us.
