Construction material
Construction is the largest use of materials there is by mass, by a very wide margin, and its requirements are unlike any other industry's. Nothing here is chosen for performance alone: it has to be available by the million tonnes, cheap enough per cubic metre to build with, workable by people on a site in bad weather, and durable for a design life measured in decades.
Which is why the answers have changed so little. Stone, brick, timber, lime and iron are ancient; concrete and steel are the two genuinely modern additions, and between them they account for most of what has been built since 1900. The environmental argument about construction is mostly an argument about those two.
Alloy
5000 series aluminium alloy
in marine and transport structures, where it is chosen over the stronger heat-treatable series for weldability
Material
Aggregate
Sand, gravel and crushed rock — by mass the most extracted solid material on Earth, and the one nobody thinks about until it runs short.
Material
Asphalt concrete
Stone held together with the bottom of the oil barrel — the surface of nearly every road, and the most recycled material there is by tonnage.
Rock
Basalt
The dark fine-grained volcanic rock that forms the ocean floor — by area the most abundant rock at the Earth's surface.
Material
Brick
Fired clay in a size one hand can lift — the oldest manufactured building unit still in mass production.
Mineral
Calcite
Calcium carbonate — the mineral of limestone, marble, chalk and most shells, and the reference point for hardness 3.
Alloy
Cast iron
Iron with enough carbon to pour but not to forge — brittle, cheap, superb at damping vibration, and the material the industrial revolution was built from.
Material
Clay
Fine-grained weathered rock that is plastic when wet and rock-hard when fired — the oldest manufactured material.
Material
Concrete
Cement, aggregate and water — the most-used manufactured material on Earth, and a significant share of global carbon emissions.
Material
Dimension stone
Rock quarried in blocks and cut to size — the building material with the longest continuous record of use.
Alloy
Duralumin
in aircraft structure specifically, which is the application it was developed for and dominated for half a century
Rock
Gneiss
quarried and sold as granite, which it resembles in hardness and durability and not at all in origin
Mineral
Gypsum
A soft sulfate mineral that gives up its water when gently heated and takes it back on mixing — the basis of plaster.
Material
Gypsum plaster
Heat gypsum to drive off most of its water, add the water back, and it sets — and the water it holds is why a plasterboard wall resists fire.
Material
Lime mortar
Mortar that sets by reabsorbing the carbon dioxide driven out of the limestone it came from — softer than cement, and that is the point.
Material
Mineral wool
Rock or slag spun into fibres like candy floss — insulation that does not burn, in a market where most of the alternatives do.
Alloy
Nickel superalloy
in the hottest section of a turbine, which is a structural application in the strictest sense — the blade carries its own centrifugal load at temperature
Material
Plywood
Thin wood veneers glued with their grain crossed — which removes the one weakness wood has, and it is the oldest engineered composite there is.
Material
Portland cement
The hydraulic binder in almost all modern concrete, made by burning limestone with clay.
Compound
Quicklime
as lime mortar and plaster, which was how everything was built before Portland cement and is still how historic masonry must be repaired
Material
Reinforced concrete
Concrete that can be pulled as well as pushed — and it works because steel and concrete happen to expand at almost exactly the same rate.
Material
Sand
as the fine aggregate in concrete and mortar, which is where most of it goes and is roughly a quarter of a concrete mix by volume
Rock
Sandstone
Cemented sand — the most-used building stone in much of the world, and the rock that holds most groundwater and oil.
Rock
Schist
used locally as a walling and paving stone where it splits into slabs, but too weak across the foliation for structural use
Rock
Serpentinite
used as a decorative stone under the trade name serpentine marble, though it is neither
Rock
Shale
as a raw material for brick and cement rather than as a stone in its own right — shale is too weak to build with
Rock
Slate
Metamorphosed mud that splits into flat sheets — the roofing material that made dense cities weatherproof.
Alloy
Stainless steel
Steel with enough chromium to repair its own oxide film — the material that made corrosion a design choice rather than a certainty.
Alloy
Steel
Iron with a controlled, small proportion of carbon — the most-used engineered material in the world.
Alloy
Weathering steel
Steel that rusts on purpose, and then stops — the material of unpainted bridges and rust-coloured sculpture.
Material
Wood
A cellular composite of cellulose and lignin — the only major structural material that is grown rather than extracted.
Each of these uses is established and cited on its own. Whether something counts as an ore, for instance, depends on grade, price and era — and those qualifications are shown alongside it.