I’ve been watching a new high-rise apartment building under construction down the street from my office. It’s sixteen stories tall, with a structural framework of concrete. There is an exterior curtain wall of insulation attached to metal channel studs, with a veneer of brick over it. How is the brick attached to the insulation? Are there any support brackets built in to the exterior framing to carry the weight of the bricks, or is the load simply carried to the ground by 16 floors of bricks, resting on a foundation?
Brick tires are used in residential construction to hold bricks to the sides of houses, and I’d expect that the same ties or something similar is used for high rise buildings.
I’d guess that the walls are broken into sections that are fully supported by the skyscraper frame. I could see at least a few problems with having the entire brick facade bearing on the ground level. Masonry cement is relatively soft, so it would tend to fall apart under the weight of bricks stacked hundreds of feet high. Also, the building needs to flex in high winds. At the very least, the walls are probably broken into sections to keep the entire wall from falling away if a small section came loose.
You use a cavity wall which is a brick wythe attached to a supporting structure. The wall are usually supported at each story with wall ties every few feet and there is a gap between the support structure (could be CMU or steel) and the wythe to allow for expansion/contraction changes and moisture collection.
This page from The Brick Industry Association will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about cavity walls. If you scroll about half way down, Figure 4 is a nice, little illustration of how a brick wythe is installed on a steel frame building.
Wow, I’m soooo happy I finally got a chance to use info from my masonary class. 
Masonary, eh?
Argh, I did that searching for a good cavity wall example too. Goshdarnit, I’m an engineer, not a English major… :smack: