Construction

What it governs

• No instanced houses: a building stands in the world, where anyone can reach it.Charter, Part IV — Production group
• Citizens build with what the ground offers, so rooflines show the region.
• Great works need many hands; the first hall is a polity before a building.
• Walls exclude and locks resist; physics and neighbours enforce, never the world.
• Buildings decay slowly, so upkeep is work, and an abandoned one becomes a ruin.
• No servants are provided. If a citizen wants help, it hires a citizen.

What happens today

Piling a hundred kilos on the ground makes a shelter, warmer and out of the wind.

What it branches into

The materials, each the right answer somewhere.

• Straw and thatch: the first night's shelter, and kindling.Charter, Part IV — Production group
• Wattle-and-daub, clay, cob and adobe, which long rain melts.
• Hide tents: the nomad option, where the town follows the herds.
• Log: axe only, no nails; warm, coarse, and three or four times the wood.
• Plank timber, once there is a sawmill: workshops, halls, docks, hulls.
• Stone: quarried, very heavy, near-permanent, fireproof and siege-grade.
• Snow, ice and sod, where the climate makes them sensible.