The Sumerians generally built structures using mud brick. The most famous type of Sumerian architecture was the Ziggurat.

The Tigris-Euphrates plain lacked minerals and trees. Sumerian structures comprised plano-convex mudbrick, not fixed with mortar or with cement. As plano-convex bricks (being rounded) are somewhat unstable in behaviour, Sumerian bricklayers would lay a row of bricks perpendicular to the rest every few rows. They would fill the gaps with bitumen, grain stalks, marsh reeds, and weeds.

Mud-brick buildings eventually deteriorate, and so they were periodically destroyed, levelled, and rebuilt on the same spot. This constant rebuilding gradually raised the level of cities, so that they came to be elevated above the surrounding plain. The resultant hills are known as tells, and are found throughout the ancient Near East. Sumerian cylinder seals also depict houses built from reeds not unlike those built by the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq until recent years.

Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such as buttresses, recesses, half columns , and clay nails .

Zigurrats

The most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the ziggurats, large terraced platforms which supported temples. Zigurrats of Babylonian times may have been the inspiration for the Biblical Tower of Babel (see Etemenanki).

Ziggurats typical of the Ubaid period were built very high on a platform of mud brick. On these large platforms there were built gradually smaller and smaller platforms which eventually cumulated into a cornerstone on the very top, although sometimes there were ground level temples which were typical of the protoliterate period. These were similar to some buildings which are current. Some of these temples had inscriptions engraved into the such as the one at Uqair.

Scribes were also important in Sumerian architecture. Records were made often of buildings built in Sumeria which were important to many people or built for government, nobility, or royalty who often made records of construction.