Wall

A wall is a structure and a surface that defines an area; carries a load; provides security, shelter, or soundproofing; or serves a decorative purpose.

Walls can also be found in buildings, where they support roofs, floors, and ceilings, enclose spaces, and provide shelter and security.

Walls may also house utilities like electrical wiring or plumbing and must conform to local building and fire codes.

In addition to their functional roles, walls can also be decorative, contributing to the aesthetic appeal of a space.

In architecture and civil engineering, curtain wall refers to a building facade that is not load-bearing but provides decoration, finish, front, face, or historical preservation.

Mullion walls are a structural system that carries the load of the floor slab on prefabricated panels around the perimeter.

Partition walls are usually not load-bearing, and can be constructed out of many materials, including steel panels, bricks, cloth, plastic, plasterboard, wood, blocks of clay, terracotta, concrete, and glass.

A timber partition consists of a wooden framework, supported on the floor or by side walls.

Metal lath and plaster, properly laid, forms a reinforced partition wall.

Partition walls constructed from fibre cement backer board are popular as bases for tiling in kitchens or in wet areas like bathrooms.

Galvanized sheet fixed to wooden or steel members are mostly adopted in works of temporary character.

Movable partitions are walls that open to join two or more rooms into one large floor area.

More to the point, an exterior structure of wood or wire is generally called a fence—but one of masonry is a wall.

Another kind of wall-fence ambiguity is the ha-ha—which is set below ground level to protect a view, yet acts as a barrier (to cattle, for example).

In areas of rocky soils around the world, farmers have often pulled large quantities of stone out of their fields to make farming easier and have stacked those stones to make walls that either mark the field boundary, or the property boundary, or both.

Typically, one neighbour cannot alter the common wall if it is likely to affect the building or property on the other side.

Most installation companies use lattice (strips of wood) to cover the joints of the temporary wall with the ceiling.

Walls are often seen in popular culture, oftentimes representing barriers preventing progress or entry.

In some cases, a wall may refer to an individual's debilitating mental or physical condition, seen as an impassable barrier.

[citation needed] In George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and its television adaptation, Game of Thrones, The Wall plays multiple important roles: as a colossal fortification, made of ice and fortified with magic spells; as a cultural barrier; and as a codification of assumptions.

Breaches of the wall, who is allowed to cross it and who is not, and its destruction have important symbolic, logistical, and socio-political implications in the storyline.

Reportedly over 700 feet high and 100 leagues (300 miles) wide, it divides the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms realm from the domain of the wildlings and several categories of undead who live beyond it.

For instance the social networking site Facebook previously used an electronic "wall" to log the scrawls of friends until it was replaced by the "timeline" feature.