For me personally, today's "solid" construction method with lots of Styrofoam and little mass no longer has much to do with the old knight's castle that seems to have settled in some minds.
It’s rather something that has settled in your mind. Something like "thicker = more solid." Materials also evolve. Or is the Benz from 40 years ago really safer just because it looks less deformed in a crash? Ask the occupant...
A functional wall (or whatever you want to call it, i.e. ETICS is meant) with 17.5 cm sand-lime brick RDK 1.8 has a mass of 315 kg/m². The ETICS also weighs something, but as long as it’s made of EPS, we’ll neglect that for now. At this point, however, a reminder again: ETICS does not always mean EPS; there are various other insulations that can be used on facades. Mineral wool, for example, would significantly increase the mass again. For comparison, a Poroton T8 36.5 cm comes to 219 kg/m². Poroton T7 49 cm (!) filled with perlite comes to 270 kg/m². And achieves thermal insulation similar to 17.5 cm sand-lime brick + 24 cm EPS WLG 032. So the construction is 8.5 cm thinner (= area savings = money), more massive and several (!) tens of thousands of euros cheaper, at least here in NRW.
Don’t get me wrong, monolithic walls have their advantages. At the beginning of the project, I also had the idea to build that way, but reality catches up. The neighbor is building that way, about 30,000 € more expensive than with ETICS, but he doesn’t care about the money. Well, if you can afford it. It may be different in other regions; here, it’s simply uncommon and the bricks are brought in from elsewhere. Some also build with 17.5 cm Poroton + ETICS. That was also offered to us, would have been 1,500 € cheaper than sand-lime brick (same shell builder).
