This is inspired in Star-Trek, as many of my ideas.

In the show, the crew is able to make the ship sturdier by transfering power to something called structural integrity fields. This idea is an attempt to make this real. 

Imagine a wall made of bricks, but these are not ordinary bricks. They are lego-fitting bricks, with electromagnets inside. The lego-fittings merely keep pieces in position. The electromagnets are placed in such a way that when energized, the bricks attract each other, and on theory, can withstand more impact or pressure than a simple and uniform block of the same material..

Now, there are some funky stuff going on. You are trading a continuous wall for one made of separate pieces, but there is an electromagnetic force added. Is this trade good? I honestly can't tell. 

The cool thing is that you can make you wall as sturdy as it needs to be, only when it needs to be. Material strengh is no longer a passive property, but an active one. This is something that, to my knowledge, we don't have. 

The wall is merely an example, you can use plates, or a beam, or any other structural component you would like.