Yeah but if you're building a house, you need the bricks anyway. Why not make your walls a battery while at it?
Any semi-modern building I've seen in my area is wood-frame with maybe a decorative brick facade on part of a wall.
I can't imagine the cost of building a brick house makes any financial sense when compared to more modern construction methods.
Am I wrong in this?
At least around here, if you want the aesthetic, you go for wood frame with brick facade.
How does brick work for modern wiring, plumbing, insulation needs? Most of that stuff is traditionally routed at least partially through load bearing walls.
it's not much different other than the addition of a masonry drill bit.
in the case of very large plumbing, sometimes whole bricks are left out and the area filled/finished with a conrete mixture and left to set around the pipe.
External walls being load bearing is generally not a thing anymore since the "invention" of sensible construction methods and steel re-inforced cement / concrete.