Which structural system is made of wood and steel and is typical for tall buildings with lightweight walls or veneers?

• A. Frame trabeated
• B. Masonry arcuated
• C. Truss
• D. Neolithic Period

Answer: (A)

The main idea is that the building’s skeleton carries the loads, while the walls act mostly as lightweight infill. A frame trabeated system uses a skeleton of vertical posts and horizontal beams, often made of wood or steel, to carry gravity and lateral loads. With this setup, the walls are lightweight veneers that don’t bear the main structural weight, which is ideal for tall buildings where you want a slender exterior and flexible interior partitions.

Masonry arches and thick walls would be required to carry loads in a masonry arcuated system, so walls aren’t lightweight veneers in that case. A truss framework is a different type of skeleton designed for spanning spaces with triangulated members, typically used for roofs or long spans rather than forming the primary tall-building frame with non-load-bearing walls. The Neolithic Period isn’t a structural system at all.