Unreinforced masonry, like a church, are extremely inefficient in terms of material and labor, think 6 foot deep walls that taper up to carry load. Optimally, bricks work in conjunction with reinforced concrete skeleton for modern construction. Cost is also a big factor, especially in developed countries, more so for high quality finishes. There's a case for small brick constructions in less developed countries with high unemployment and low wages.
In terms of embodied energy, brick veneer (composite of materials with a layer of exterior brick) typically have the best life-cycle ecological performance, 20%-60% better, compared to curtain wall (glass+steel) and precast concrete panels, across many climates and regions. Engineered wood for buildings is probably the better option in the long run. There's a lot of movement recently, construction is a very slow and conservative industry though. Probably need for results to be validated. A lot of claims are by industry publications. But intuitively it feels right.
A lot of false dichotomy in this article. Somehow brick is better than lumber in all cases? (No mention of the expense and cost, and environmental impact of making and shipping bricks).
Population density is also a big factor in establishing the stringency of building codes. Codes set market standards.
Ability to remodel a home is also a key piece of it's ability to maintain value, this is much more difficult with brick interior walls.
Wood has advantages. For one, insulation is easier. A lot of the current best practices for insulating a brick building are basically to build a different kind of building, insulate it, and then add a cosmetic brick facade. But in a Mediterranean climate insulation is less of a concern and some thermal mass to even out the evening vs daytime temperature is enough. Sturdy is a matter of what you're trying to achieve - for example wood is superior in earthquake zones. But the real deciding factor is the cost of materials and labor - in much of Europe wood is more expensive and craftspeople are more familiar with other techniques. The converse is true for much of the USA. Wood is also just as long lived - hundreds of years if well maintained and kept dry (at least in regions where termites aren't endemic). The biggest problem with short lived American residential construction isn't the wood but instead the use of engineered materials and fixtures with finite lifespans. For example laminate flooring and older plastic water piping which is expected to last only a few decades before needing to be gutted and rebuilt.
We don't really build load bearing structures with brick anymore, it's too weak. Any brick you see is mostly done for moisture control or aesthetics (although in Canada you can reduce the wind load by 10% to your actual structure if you have brick as the outer wall).
Wood buildings are significantly cheaper to maintain. Significantly cheaper to build (at least in Canada).
The down side of wood is that it doesn't handle wetness well and it gets damaged more easily. For larger projects concrete starts getting financially competitive also partially due to the fact that it's more friendly to just leave exposed while you're building. You can't really do that with wood. Even the OP's original building was being built in sections.
Also, wood isn't as strong as steel + concrete. So if property prices are really high concrete and steel are going to win just so you can build higher and lose less space to structural members.
Countries use the building material most available to them.
In much of Europe that's stone because wood has mostly been harvested to the point of extinction (and wood is expensive to transport long distances). Whereas in North America wood remains an inexpensive building material. Wood, combined with modern insulation and building codes, can be safe and efficient enough for modern homes.
As someone who has lived in both parts of the world, wood takes some getting used to but you start to appreciate it after some time. Specifically brick may provides better noise isolation, heat retention, arguably can look nicer than drywall, but on the downside once a home is built modifications can be extremely challenging/expensive (whereas drywall/wood is almost like LEGO in terms of being able to re-configure non-load interior walls, even for handy homeowners themselves).
Will a brick home outlast a wood home? Absolutely, no question.
But that advantage is largely lost in the US. Cheaper land means homes are more spaced out, and wood construction means they're cheaper to re-build, so homes are often completely gutted or entirely re-built so a new owner can put their personal "stamp" on their home, whereas it is impractical to rebuild a European home due to neighbor proximity, cost of brick construction, and land size (i.e. there's often no other configuration that's workable for the lot).
So these days, I don't consider one superior to the other. They both have advantages and trade-offs, and frankly the contest is irrelevant as brick isn't suddenly going to get cheaper than wood in the US nor wood get cheaper than brick in Europe.
I'm biased to US construction methods of course. Note that while bricks are themselves of a worse r-value than wood, but wood isn't actually a great r-value either.
Note that bricks are not a strong as wood under tension. They do well under compression, but that is not all the loads to account for. Bricks are used in cities and commercial construction primarily because they do not burn and so you can use them as a safety barrier.
I say this as someone living in Northern Europe in a wooden house: there’s a fairly good reason that the building industry uses brick rather than lumber here. The combination of humidity, temperature, and often densely-packed housing created both a skills base and a supply chain that has, over time, made it needlessly costly to build with lumber. And, a lot of our historic architectural styles prioritise brick, which is a huge pull factor when people are deciding on styles for new buildings.
I wouldn’t consider bricks better than wood. Especially in an earthquake prone area.
Now, steel - that would be better.
But if thinking about the future I think wood framing is superior. In many places in Europe the old brick or stone homes have a lot of issues by modern standards and they are expensive to renovate. They tend to have floor plans that made sense 200+ years ago but not today. Like small rooms to better conserve fireplace heat. But again, it’s very difficult to renovate these homes to have a sensible, modern floor plan.
Old wood frame homes are fairly easy to renovate either to modernize or to renovate.
In the first world, brick construction is extremely expensive and you're right -- modern residences are often built with structural beams (whether wood or steel), and the brick is usually just a veneer.
But in the third world, variants of brick (e.g. cinder block) are often the norm, and are structurally load-bearing, and work fine for two to three stories. And they're very easy and cheap to build with.
The US has a ton of cheap lumber so load-bearing wood frames are common. Many countries don't have forests like that so bricks/blocks are the way to go.
The other thing is earthquake safety. Wood frame is often far more resilient to sheer stress than concrete/brick. Concrete can be reinforced to mitigate that, but I wonder how viable that is for buildings on the scale of SFH, not major developments.
Bricks have very low r-value meaning that you pay a lot of money to heat/cool them. Bricks is a bad choice for construction anywhere where indoor climate control is an issue.
American construction is strong enough to last for a few hundred years if you maintain it. While it isn't passive house efficient it is efficient (and it isn't clear that a passive house is even possible in our climate - many of them make other compromises which means they rot out in a few years).
In the US, perhaps, but brick construction still predominates in many countries including much of Africa, the Middle East and India. Not coincidentally, all three also have limited supplies of timber.
I have to disagree, and I don't think the first world vs. third world comparison is helpful.
Bricks are quite common in Europe, at least for buildings up to a certain height. The resulting buildings here (in Germany) offer higher living quality with better thermal and acoustic insulation than a typical North American beams + drywalls building. That's just an observation though and maybe the general construction method is not the cause - maybe it's just because our windows and doors are much more solid.
In terms of embodied energy, brick veneer (composite of materials with a layer of exterior brick) typically have the best life-cycle ecological performance, 20%-60% better, compared to curtain wall (glass+steel) and precast concrete panels, across many climates and regions. Engineered wood for buildings is probably the better option in the long run. There's a lot of movement recently, construction is a very slow and conservative industry though. Probably need for results to be validated. A lot of claims are by industry publications. But intuitively it feels right.
reply