Summary
Building encompasses the design, construction and ongoing management of the physical structures that define our built environment, from private dwellings and commercial premises to critical infrastructure such as bridges and tunnels. Research in this field spans materials science, structural engineering, energy systems and environmental design, seeking solutions that satisfy safety and comfort while reducing carbon footprints and enhancing resilience to climate extremes and seismic events. Advances in novel cementitious composites, high-performance envelopes and integrated sensor networks have enabled real-time monitoring of structural health, energy use and indoor environmental quality. Digital design tools, including parametric modelling and digital twins, facilitate optimisation from first principles through whole-life performance assessment. Together, these developments support the global aims of net-zero energy operation, circular-economy practices and adaptive reuse, ensuring that buildings remain safe, comfortable and sustainable over extended service lives.
Research from Nature Portfolio
Recent studies have shown that the incorporation of crushed soda-lime glass as a partial sand replacement in foamed concrete yields dual benefits of recycling and performance enhancement. Substituting up to 20 % by weight markedly increased compressive, flexural and splitting tensile strengths by up to 44 %, while reducing porosity and improving thermal conductivity through a more uniform pore-structure distribution. These findings point to sustainable façade and infill applications that marry waste-glass valorisation with enhanced mechanical and insulating properties.
New evidence on plastered cellular lightweight concrete block masonry demonstrates significant gains in seismic resilience when blocks are confined by reinforced bands. Under cyclic lateral loading, tied block walls exhibited more than double the lateral load capacity and a 5 % increase in displacement ductility compared with unreinforced specimens. This work validates the use of lightweight cellular blocks combined with strategic confinement to deliver ductile, load-bearing masonry systems suitable for earthquake-prone regions.
Topic trend for the past 5 years
The graph below shows the article count in Nature Index journals for building.
* The ‘Current Index’ represents data for a 12-month rolling window, the current window is 1 May 2025 - 30 April 2026.
Technical terms
Foamed concrete: A lightweight cementitious material formed by entraining stable air bubbles in a cement slurry, used for insulation, infill and low-load applications, whose properties depend on density and pore connectivity.
Cellular lightweight concrete (CLC): A variant of foamed concrete made with pre-formed foam and cementitious slurry, offering reduced dead loads and improved thermal performance in block masonry.
Operational carbon: CO₂ emissions associated with energy consumption during a building’s occupied life, including heating, cooling, ventilation and plug loads.
End-use efficiency: Measures that improve the energy performance of specific building services or appliances, thereby reducing overall energy consumption per unit of activity.
Decarbonisation efficiency: The rate at which CO₂ emissions are reduced over time relative to economic or floor-area growth, expressed as a percentage change per annum.
Notable articles in building
- Fly ash-dominated High-Strength Engineered/Strain-Hardening Geopolymer Composites (HS-EGC/SHGC): Influence of alkalinity and environmental assessment. Journal of Cleaner Production (2024).
- Simultaneous enhancement of ductility and sustainability of high-strength Strain-Hardening Cementitious Composites (SHCC) using recycled fine aggregates. Journal of Cleaner Production (2024).
- An evolutionary deep learning model based on EWKM, random forest algorithm, SSA and BiLSTM for building energy consumption prediction. Energy (2024).
- Mix design optimization of waste-based aggregate concrete for natural resource utilization and global warming potential. Journal of Cleaner Production (2024).
About these summaries
This Nature Research Intelligence Topic summary is created with the cited references and a large language model. We take care to ground generated text with facts, and have systems in place to gain human feedback on the overall quality of the process in line with our AI principles. We strive to create accurate and useful summaries for people unfamiliar with the research topic and that supports this goal. These pages are a beta release and will be updated as we learn how best to help people gain value from a research topic summary.
Research
Position of Building in Nature Index by Count
Leading institutions
| Institution | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Tsinghua University | 24 | 11.37 |
| The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) | 12 | 7.11 |
| Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) | 10 | 6.05 |
| University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) | 9 | 5.78 |
| City University of Hong Kong (CityU) | 9 | 4.99 |
| Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) | 7 | 4.8 |
| Zhejiang University (ZJU) | 8 | 4.39 |
| Chongqing University (CQU) | 10 | 4.36 |
| Hunan University (HNU) | 5 | 4.07 |
| Tongji University | 4 | 3.01 |
Leading countries/territories
| Countries/territories | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| China | 167 | 148.56 |
| United States of America (USA) | 24 | 18.25 |
| Italy | 17 | 12.43 |
| United Kingdom (UK) | 19 | 8.38 |
| Australia | 10 | 6.61 |
| Japan | 13 | 6.03 |
| South Korea | 6 | 5.33 |
| Switzerland | 8 | 5.2 |
| Spain | 7 | 4.41 |
| Canada | 6 | 4.08 |
Collaboration
Top 5 leading collaborators in Building
Collaborating institutions
Note: Hover over the bars to view details about each institution's Share.
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