Brick
A brick is a hand sized rectangular building unit, roughly 2 1/4 x 3 3/4 x 8 inches, made from clay and hardened by heat, usually at high temperatures in a kiln/oven. Brick has been used for millennia as a building material. Bricks can be used as a load-bearing wall in residential construction, but this type of construction is rare today due to the intensity of labor, energy codes and expense. More commonly today, brick is applied as a veneer over other wall assemblies. Since brick is a relatively expensive cladding option for residential construction, it is often used in a decorative manner (as a wainscoting or only on the front facade of a house). Brick is very durable and requires low maintenance.