I don't know that I believe concrete walls is going to help protect from "thermal extremes". My work building has concrete exterior walls and they are frigid in winter and boiling in the summer. I'm sure there may be ways to do it better, but solid concrete is not very insulative from my experiences. Also brick walls aren't super strong against side to side forces so they do pretty badly in earthquakes and high wind situations like hurricanes or tornadoes. They could be reinforced, but at a point you are framing a house in steel and just using bricks to cover it up - what's the point of the bricks?