Facadism

In the early 1920s, the Anglo-Czechoslovak Bank tore down its head office, the Sweerts-Sporck Palace [cs] in Prague, and had it rebuilt behind the preserved façade on a design by architect Josef Gočár, visible in the background
Preservation of a 19th-century facade, Noordereiland, Rotterdam
Reverse façadism: New construction with an old-looking façade hung in front of a cast concrete wall, as built in the Dom-Römer Project in Frankfurt am Main.

Facadism, façadism, or façadomy[1] is the architectural and construction practice where the facade of a building is designed or constructed separately from the rest of a building, or when only the facade of a building is preserved with new buildings erected behind or around it.

There are aesthetic and historical reasons for preserving building facades. Facadism can be the response to the interiors of a building becoming unusable, such as being damaged by fire. In developing areas, however, the practice is sometimes used by property developers seeking to redevelop a site as a compromise with preservationists who wish to preserve buildings of historical or aesthetic interest. It can be regarded as a compromise between historic preservation and demolition and thus has been lauded as well as decried.[citation needed]

There is sometimes a blurred line between renovation, adaptive reuse, reconstruction and facadism. Sometimes buildings are renovated to such an extent that they are "skinned", preserving only the exterior shell, and used for purposes other than those for which they were originally intended. While this is equivalent to facadism, the difference is typically the retention of roof and or floor structures, maintaining a credible link to the original building. In contrast, facadism generally involves retaining only one or two street facing walls for purely aesthetic and decorative purposes.[2] Facadomy is a practice in postmodern architecture reaching its peak in the latter half of the 20th century. The setback or podium architecture technique gives an illusion of integrity to the original building by visually separating the old from the new, helping to mitigate farcical effects such as the floors and windows not lining up or a dramatic clash of styles.

Critics label the practice as architectural sham, some claiming that it sometimes results in part of the building becoming a folly.

  1. ^ Paul Spencer Byard (1 January 1998). The Architecture of Additions: Design and Regulation. W.W. Norton & Company. pp. 105–. ISBN 978-0-393-73021-0.
  2. ^ Jonathan Richards (12 November 2012). Facadism. Routledge. pp. 7–. ISBN 978-1-134-88952-5.