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A building in China

A building and skybridge in Munich, Germany.

Example of a religious building: the Great Mosque of Kairouan (also called the Mosque of Uqba), founded in 670, dates in its present state principally from the 9th century. The Great Mosque of Kairouan is located in the city of Kairouan, Tunisia.

Rivers Towers building under construction. Cúcuta, Colombia.

In architecture, construction, engineering, real estate development and technology the word building may refer to one of the following:

1. Any human-made structure used or intended for supporting or sheltering any use or continuous occupancy, or
2. An act of construction (i. e. the activity of building, see also builder)

In this article, the first usage is generally intended unless otherwise specified.

Buildings come in a wide amount of shapes and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, to land prices, ground conditions, specific uses and aesthetic reasons.

Buildings serve several needs of society – primarily as shelter from weather and as general living space, to provide privacy, to store belongings and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) and the outside (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful).

Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or canvasess of artistic expression. In recent years, interest in sustainable planning and building practices has also become part of the design process of many new buildings.

Definitions[link]

Building is defined in many aspects as:

• As a Civil Engineering structures such as a house, worship centre, Factories etc. that has a foundation,wall,roof etc. that protect human being and their properties from direct harsh effect of weather like rain,wind,sun etc.
• The act of constructing, erecting, or establishing.
• The art of constructing edifices, or the practice of civil architecture.
• That which is built; a fabric or edifice constructed, as a house, a church, castle, arena/ stadium, etc.
• The act of constructing or building something; "during the construction we had to take a detour"; "his hobby was the building of boats"
• The commercial activity involved in constructing buildings; "their main business is home construction"; "workers in the building trades"
• A structure that has a roof and walls and stands more or less permanently in one place;^[1] "there was a three-storey building on the corner"; "it was an imposing edifice"
• The occupants of a building; "the entire building complained about the noise"

To differentiate buildings in the usage of this article from other buildings and other structures that are not intended for continuous human occupancy, the latter are called non-building structures or simply structures.

Structural height in technical usage is the height to the highest architectural detail on building from street-level. Depending on how they are classified, spires and masts may or may not be included in this height. Spires and masts used as antennas are not generally included.

The definition of a low-rise vs. a high-rise building is a matter of debate, but generally three storeys or less is considered low-rise.^[2]

History[link]

The first shelter on Earth constructed by a relatively close ancestor to humans is believed to be built 500,000 years ago by an early ancestor of humans, Homo erectus.^[3]

Types[link]

A timber framing house in Marburg, Germany.

Residential[link]

Residential buildings are called houses/homes, though buildings containing large numbers of separate dwelling units are often called apartment buildings or apartment blocks to differentiate them from the more 'individual' house.

Building types may range from one-room wood-framed, masonry, or adobe dwellings to multi-million dollar high-rise buildings able to house thousands of people. Increasing settlement density in buildings (and closer distances between buildings) is usually a response to high ground prices resulting from many people wanting to live close to work or similar attractors.

Multi-story[link]

Some of Denver's multi-story buildings.

A multi-story building is a building that has multiple floors above ground in the building.

Multi-story buildings aim to increase the area of the building without increasing the area of the land the building is built on, hence saving land and, in most cases, money (depending on material used and land prices in the area). The building with the most stories is the Burj Khalifa, with 162.

Creation[link]

The practice of designing, constructing, and operating buildings is most usually a collective effort of different groups of professionals and trades. Depending on the size, complexity, and purpose of a particular building project, the project team may include:

• A real estate developer who secures funding for the project;
• One or more financial institutions or other investors that provide the funding
• Local planning and code authorities
• A Surveyor who performs an ALTA/ACSM and construction surveys throughout the project;
• Construction managers who coordinate the effort of different groups of project participants;
• Licensed architects and engineers who provide building design and prepare construction documents;
• Landscape architects;
• Interior designers;
• Other consultants;
• Contractors who provide construction services and install building systems such as climate control, electrical, plumbing, Decoration, fire protection, security and telecommunications;
• Marketing or leasing agents;
• Facility managers who are responsible for operating the building.

Regardless of their size or intended use, all buildings in the US must comply with zoning ordinances, building codes and other regulations such as fire codes, life safety codes and related standards.

Vehicles—such as trailers, caravans, ships and passenger aircraft—are treated as "buildings" for life safety purposes.

Ownership and funding[link]

• Mortgage loan
• Real estate developer

Building services[link]

Physical plant[link]

The BB&T Building in Macon, Georgia is constructed of aluminum.

Any building requires a certain amount of internal infrastructure to function, which includes such elements like heating / cooling, power and telecommunications, water and wastewater etc. Especially in commercial buildings (such as offices or factories), these can be extremely intricate systems taking up large amounts of space (sometimes located in separate areas or double floors / false ceilings) and constitute a big part of the regular maintenance required.

Conveying systems[link]

Systems for transport of people within buildings:

• Elevator
• Escalator
• Moving sidewalk (horizontal and inclined)

Systems for transport of people between interconnected buildings:

• Skyway
• Underground city

Building damage[link]

A building in Massueville, Quebec, Canada engulfed by fire.

Buildings may be damaged during the construction of the building or during maintenance. There are several other reasons behind building damage like accident.^[4] Buildings also may suffer from fire damage and flooding in special circumstances.

See also[link]

• Autonomous building
• Building material
• Earthquake engineering
• Famous buildings
• Float glass
• Green building
• Hurricane-proof building
• List of building types
• List of largest buildings in the world
• Natural building
• Natural disaster and earthquake
• Nonbuilding structure
• Skyscrapers
• Steel building
• Commercial modular construction

Architecture portal

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Buildings

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Building.

This article reads more like a story than an encyclopedia entry. To meet Wikipedia's quality standards and conform to the neutral point of view policy, please help to introduce a more formal style and remove any personally invested tone. (November 2011)

Terry Crews
Crews at the San Diego Comic-Con International in July 2010
Born	Terrence Alan Crews (1968-07-30) July 30, 1968 (age 43) Flint, Michigan, U.S.
Other names	Terry Alan Crews, Big T, T-Money, Squeegee Lo, Henry David Thoreau, Terry Crews, Jr.
Occupation	Football player (1991-1996) Actor, comedian, voice artist (1999–present)
Years active	1999–present
Spouse	Rebecca Crews (1990–present) 5 children
Website
http://www.terrycrews.com/

Terrence Alan "Terry" Crews (born July 30, 1968) is an American actor, comedian, voice artist and a former player in the National Football League. He is perhaps best known for his role as family patriarch Julius on the UPN/CW sitcom Everybody Hates Chris. Currently, he stars in the TBS sitcom Are We There Yet? as Nick Kingston-Persons. Additionally, he stars in the BET reality series The Family Crews, and has appeared in such films as The 6th Day, Friday After Next, White Chicks, Idiocracy and The Expendables.

In 2010 Crews was featured in several Old Spice TV commercials for their "Odor Blocker Body Wash", and in 2012 for their body spray, directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.

Early life[link]

Crews was born in Flint, Michigan,^[1] the son of Patricia and Terry Crews, Sr. He attended Flint Southwestern Academy.^[2] He earned an Art Excellence Scholarship to attend the Interlochen Center for the Arts and then Western Michigan University.^[3]

While completing his studies as hop an Art major, Crews was a key member of the WMU football team, where he earned all-conference honors as a defensive end. Crews was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL in the 11th round of the 1991 NFL Draft.^[4] He carved out a career that lasted seven^[5] seasons, including stints with the Rams, San Diego Chargers, the Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles.

Career[link]

After retiring from the NFL in 1997, Crews pursued an acting career and took a stint as T-Money on Battle Dome (modeled after American Gladiators). Crews played the beefcake "he-man" in movies, such as White Chicks. Crews also played Damon Pearly in Friday After Next, starring Ice Cube and Mike Epps. He has also done commercials with Nike. He last starred in the sitcom Everybody Hates Chris as Julius Rock, and his more modern movie appearances were alongside Adam Sandler in The Longest Yard, Click, and The Benchwarmers (as well as the long-delayed Mike Judge film Idiocracy, where Crews played President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho).

Crews has made many cameo appearances. He was in blink-182's music video of Down as a police officer, in Jamie Kennedy's Rollin' with Saget as the security guard, and in films such as Training Day and Soul Plane.

Crews usually portrays buff-looking characters with a humorous softer side, singing along with 80's music or becoming engaged with soap operas (as well as his signature robot dance). But more recently, he has been able to alternate with more serious projects such as his recent appearances in Harsh Times, Street Kings and the action movie, The Expendables.

He has been featured recently in several Old Spice TV commercials for their "Odor Blocker Body Wash". The ads were directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.

In the sitcom Are We There Yet?, Crews had a lead role as Nick Kingston-Persons. In the series' first trailer, Ice Cube said that Crews is the perfect person to replace him as Nick, and that his physical comedy is undeniable. The series was picked up for 90 new episodes^[6] (approx six seasons) by August 2010, while Crews enjoyed box office success in three movies in August 2010 (Middle Men, The Expendables, Lottery Ticket).^[7]

He also stars in his own reality series on BET entitled The Family Crews which is about his everyday life with his family. The show premiered on February 21, 2010.

Personal life[link]

Crews at the 79th Annual Academy Awards Children Uniting Nations/Billboard afterparty.

Crews has four daughters and one son (with one being a stepdaughter from his wife's previous relationship) with his wife of 22 years, Rebecca King-Crews, a former beauty queen and gospel recording artist.

Filmography[link]

Television work[link]

• Battle Dome - T-Money (1999–2001)
• Everybody Hates Chris - Julius (2005–2009)
• My Wife and Kids - Daryl (2005; Guest star)
• The Boondocks - Multiple characters (voice) (2006; Guest star)
• Are We There Yet? - Nick Kingston-Persons (2010–present)
• The Family Crews - Himself (2010–present)

Music videos[link]

• Blink-182 - "Down" - Police Officer (2004)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Terry Crews

• Official website
• Terry Crews at the Internet Movie Database
• BET Shows - The Family Crews Website
• Squeegee Lo Website
• NFL stats at Databasefootball.com
• Terry Crews reality show - The Family Crews

This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (April 2009)

Jon Peters (born John H. Peters; June 2, 1945)^[1] is an American movie producer.

Early life[link]

Peters was born in Van Nuys, California,^[1] the son of Helen (née Pagano), a receptionist, and Jack Peters, a cook who owned a Hollywood diner.^[2] He is of Cherokee (father) and Italian (mother) descent.^[3] His mother's family owned a renowned Rodeo Drive salon in Beverly Hills. Jack Peters suffered a heart attack and died when his son was ten, and Helen's marriage to a construction worker devastated the family.^[4]

Career[link]

Peters went into the family hair styling business and was successful on Rodeo Drive in Hollywood where he made many industry connections. Peters first gained national prominence when he began dating superstar singer and actress Barbra Streisand after designing the short wig Barbra wore for the 1974 comedy For Pete's Sake. He then produced Streisand's 1974 Butterfly album, from which two songs, "There Won't Be Trumpets/A Quiet Thing" and "God Bless the Child", were later released on her Just For the Record box set - on the liner notes she stated that 'no one at the record company shared my enthusiasm. They thought the songs didn't belong on a contemporary album like Butterfly'. In 1976 he was given a controversial producing credit on Streisand's remake of A Star Is Born.^[5] He worked with Peter Guber for the next ten years. Their hits included The Color Purple, Flashdance, Batman, and Rain Man. He headed Sony Pictures with Guber for two years until Guber fired him. The pair were the subject of the book Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood by Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters.^[6]

Peters and Superman[link]

In his Q&A/comedy DVD, An Evening With Kevin Smith, writer/director Kevin Smith relates an anecdote about working with Peters when he was hired to write a script for a new Superman movie, then called Superman Reborn, and would later be renamed Superman Lives.^[7] According to Smith, before being hired to draft a screenplay he had to meet with Peters, the project's producer. During this meeting, Peters expressed disdain for most of Superman's iconic characteristics by demanding that Superman was never to fly^[8] or appear in his trademark costume.^[8] He also suggested Sean Penn as being ideal for the role, based on his performance as a violent death row inmate in Dead Man Walking saying that Penn had the eyes of a "caged animal, a fucking killer," even though Superman is known for refusing to ever kill. Peters then demanded that if Smith were to write a script, the third act of the film would have to include Superman fighting a giant spider,^[9] to be unveiled in an homage to King Kong. Peters later produced the 1999 steampunk western Wild Wild West, the finale of which features a giant mechanical spider.^[9]

Smith says he met with Peters again after finishing an 80-page outline, which Peters asked him to read aloud in its entirety. Peters then instructed him to include a robot sidekick for Brainiac (who would speak with a stereotypical homosexual lisp), a fight scene between Brainiac and two polar bears, and a marketable "space dog" pet, similar to Star Wars character Chewbacca. While Smith, against his own judgment, acquiesced to Peters' demands and inserted them into his script, the project eventually was abandoned and the script discarded.

In Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, Jon Peters admitted that the Superman franchise was problematic for him: "The elements that I was focusing on were away from the heart, it was more leaning towards Star Wars in a sense, you know. I didn't realize the human part of it, I didn't have that." He subsequently served as Executive Producer for Superman Returns, the 2006 movie directed by Bryan Singer.

[edit] Peters and The Sandman

Jon Peters's involvement in producing the adaptation of the Sandman comics for Warner Brothers met with controversy. One draft script commissioned by Peters was reviewed on the Internet at Ain't It Cool News,^[10] and was met with scorn. Sandman creator Neil Gaiman called the last screenplay that Warner Brothers would send him "...not only the worst Sandman script I've ever seen, but quite easily the worst script I've ever read."^[11] By 2001, the project had become stranded in development hell.

In a 2005 interview, Gaiman summarized the Peters approach as follows: "But Sandman movies, they just got increasingly appalling. It was really strange. They started out hiring some really good people and you got Elliott and Rossio and Roger Avary came in and did a draft. They were all solid scripts. And then Jon Peters fired all of them and got in some people who take orders, and who wanted fistfights and all this stuff. It had no sensibility and it was just...they were horrible."^[12]

Book[link]

Nikke Finke's Deadline Hollywood blog reported on a book proposal for the autobiography of Jon Peters, written by him and Los Angeles writer William Stadiem.^{[13][dead link]} Peters reportedly intended to write about his life with Streisand and string of other celebrity lovers. In 2009 he subsequently withdrew from the HarperCollins book deal after adverse publicity triggered by the leaking of the proposal and potential lawsuits.^[14]

Legal issues[link]

In November 2008, Peters was sued for sexual harassment by his Superman: Man of Steel co-producer Brian Quintana.^[15]

In December 2008, Peters sued his past President and General Counsel, Ronald Wayne Grigg. Peters accused Grigg of a campaign of deceit that included hiring an assistant with the company's money, stealing his computers, and drugging and raping two women on Peters' property.^[16]

In August 2011, a Los Angeles jury ordered Jon Peters to pay a former assistant $3 million after finding she was subjected to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment during the production of Superman Returns.^[17]

Selected filmography as producer and executive producer[link]

• A Star Is Born (1976)
• Caddyshack (1980)
• An American Werewolf in London (1981)
• Six Weeks (1982)
• Flashdance (1983)
• The Color Purple (1985)
• Clue (1985)
• Innerspace (1987)
• Who's That Girl (1987)
• Rain Man (1988)
• Tango & Cash (1989)
• Batman (1989)
• The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
• Batman Returns (1992)
• Money Train (1995)
• My Fellow Americans (1996)
• Wild Wild West (1999)
• Superman Returns (2006)
• A Star Is Born, announced

Further reading[link]

• Griffin, Nancy; Masters, Kim (1996). Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony For a Ride in Hollywood. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80931-1. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Jon Peters at the Internet Movie Database