Buildings are constructed structures. The speaker taught his people “to build buildings” and to work in wood, iron, copper, brass, steel, gold, silver, and precious ores (2 Nephi 5:15). Those who said “we began to build buildings” also repaired the walls of Lehi-Nephi and Shilom (Mosiah 9:8).
People in the land northward dwelt in tents and “houses of cement”. They allowed trees to grow so that in time they “might have timber to build their houses, yea, their cities, and their temples, and their synagogues, and their sanctuaries, and all manner of their buildings” (Helaman 3:9). The whole face of the land “had become covered with buildings” (Mormon 1:7).