Brick requires very little maintenance, ages beautifully, and modifies fairly easily. Old brick has a resale value allowing easy recycling. Many designs are possible. Older construction methods avoiding the cavity wall ties need to be used, however, or stainless-steel ties. Walls should be low maintenance rather than no maintenance.
Vernacular buildings are ones built directly from experience with other buildings.
This was formerly a regional practice but has become national and international. Vernacular buildings are exceedingly cautious and so immersed in their culture and region that they only look interesting to outsiders. Vernacular builders are glad to accept well-proven solutions to old problems, concentrating on new problems. They become carefully tuned to local weather and society. Vernacular buildings deal in function and form, but not in style.