Abstract: With the rapid development of China's construction industry, the tremendous consumption of building materials heavily threatens resources and the environment. Thus, it is necessary to identify resource consumption characteristics and environmental impact situation of different types of buildings. Shanghai was selected as the target in the present study. Based on the inventory of construction materials from Beijing University of Technology and Ecoinvent database, the embodied environmental impact of building materials was evaluated and forecasted by using the ReCiPe method. The results showed that the main environmental impacts resulting from building material production is human toxicity and metal depletion, accounting for 45% and 20% of the total environmental impact respectively. Steel bar and wood appears as the two highest environmental burden materials, contributing around 47% and 17% for diverse environment impacts. An assessment for the building construction in Shanghai in 2014 indicated that the high-level dwelling buildings and factory buildings had the most severe embodied environmental impact. According to the rapid development trend of construction, by 2020, the embodied environmental impact of residential buildings is predicted to be 1.52 times that of 2014, and non-residential buildings is 1.14 times. In order to reduce the embodied environmental impact of buildings, measures for reducing the environmental pollution for producing steel, cement, aluminum and wood should be explored. Environmentally-friendly materials such as aerated concrete blocks, high performance concrete and inorganic thermal insulation mortar should be considered. Besides, since the construction of high-rise residential buildings and factory buildings is tremendous, it is especially necessary to explore measures for saving building materials for them.