Should the external thermal insulation composite system (ETICS/WDVS) be removed before installing facing bricks or not?

Hello everyone,

we will soon renovate/remodel our house. The house (single-family home) was built in 1995, so it is already insulated. It is a double-layer masonry (sand-lime brick and clinker). Insulation was done with 6 cm of mineral wool. Therefore, in my opinion, there is no air layer and thus it is a cavity insulation.

Currently, there is still an outdoor seating area on the ground floor, which should be closed from the outside so that the living/dining area becomes larger (see photo).. The previous exterior walls (non-load bearing) will then be removed. Ideally, we would also like to clad the area with clinker as the rest of the house already is. However, this will probably not look good aesthetically, even if the same clinker can still be found somewhere. There will presumably always be large differences visible between old and new.

Therefore, we have decided to design the new area with an ETICS + plaster facade so that the new part also visually stands out from the building. Our question was whether the ETICS can simply be placed in front of the clinker or if it is advisable for energy or moisture reasons to remove the clinker? If yes, would the clinker then have to be removed up to under the gable? Because the ETICS part actually only concerns the ground floor and the clinker above is to be retained. Is it possible to somehow support this so that the ETICS can only be installed on the ground floor?

What are your experiences here?

Thank you very much for your help and best regards!

Basically, you can insulate in front of the bricks, but if you then re-brick them, you get real fortress walls. In that case, a plaster façade would be more appropriate or, for a lot of effort, dismantling the existing bricks.