Wether or not the Hardiplank style of building would fit a modern house is a matter of taste and preferences. While the hardiplank style is known for the classical look, it would also fit on modern designed houses.
You camp in a building or a house.
Every building has a vent terminal in modern societies
First try a visit to www.wikipedia.org and search for Building Material. There you will find a comprehensive overview of modern and traditional building materials, and it should help you decide what would work best for the home you wish to build.
Just like you would a house.
I would like to start building my own house. Which materials are needed to build a house with a low budget?
We have most of their architecture on modern day buildings such as the White House in Washington D.C.
A parallel circuit
I would probably use terra cotta shovels, rakes and picks.
That would be a duplex.
The Sidney Opera House is a relatively new building. It is being preserved as any new building would be - by regular maintenance.
Building a house is for multiple reasons. You specified that YOU are building the house. Dating back in time, such as the Indians they built houses for mainly PROTECTION and not to just live in them forever, they made simple houses called Wicki-ups which were just tents made out of sticks. Now-a-days if YOU were to build a house, it wouldn't be modern mostly because of it being yourself, it would take decades. Correction: If you meant why would anyone build a house, it could be for their job or if you meant if they wanted to live in a house, it is because of PROTECTION or private living space like I have written before.
There are plenty of great websites to get you started with planning and building your house. For a large selection of reasonably-priced house plans check out www.houseplans.com. Similar sites are www.homeplans.com and www.saybuild.com.