
The Rise of 'Facadism' in London - ZeljkoS
https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-50396337
======
beaner
I actually appreciate this. Glass and steel are nice from a distance, but
when's the last time on the sidewalk you actually took a pause and leaned on
one for a break? These new textures are cold and distant, pristine and
fragile. You're not supposed to touch them.

Concrete, stone and brick are the opposite. They're timeless and welcoming.
You can touch them without having to worry about leaving a print. They feel
like they take care of you, rather than the other way around.

And aesthetically, IMO, there's nothing more incredibly boring than just
sheets of untouchable glass straight down the street. There's no texture and
no character.

A good compromise is to allow the warmer facades of old buildings to continue
to exist, and leave the new ones to the skyline, so long as they continue to
be isolating.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
I'd rather they put in a building that actually _uses_ the facade they sit
behind, in keeping with the architecture they supposedly want to preserve. The
examples where it's just a wall with new style building sat behind look awful,
and the windows don't even line up - so probably very inconsistent light,
times of deep shadow and limited views from inside.

Looks more like the sort of thing your neighbour might do if they were a
builder and you'd _really_ upset them. :)

~~~
netcan
Like most architecture, there are good and bad examples.

Planning/regulation can't really do much about the subjective, and the nature
of these tends to make permissions a central player. "Facadism" is becoming a
"best practice" compromise between preservation, modernity, commercials &
such. The danger there is box ticking tokenism and the ugly architecture that
comes from that.

Some bad architecture will always exist regardless but a lot of the bad
examples in this style come from this "designed for planners" tokenism.

~~~
Retric
Can you provide a single good example? Every example I know of is bad for
building occupants and looks terrible at street level.

~~~
brainwad
This one in Seattle was pretty good, I think:
[https://goo.gl/maps/9vaMWncm1m6SA96F9](https://goo.gl/maps/9vaMWncm1m6SA96F9).

~~~
maximuspro
It's a very basic and simple architecture so it looks ok. What's in London is
a different thing. Buildings there are much more exquisite and what's being
built behind is much more uglier.

------
VBprogrammer
I wonder how much the difficulty in bringing these building up to modern
standards plays into these decisions. Over the years these building would have
been fitted with a variety of different heating systems; perhaps starting with
open hearth fires when they were built with large brick chimney stacks to
provide thermal mass. Over the years they probably got coal gas put in, or
perhaps a back boiler hot water system operating on a thermal syphon,
eventually being replaced by an early gas or oil boiler central boiler.

Each of these steps leaves another complex layer of hacks, fixes and dead
pipes behind making it a long and challenging job to strip out and replace.

Similarly, when built it probably had no electrical supply at all, eventually
being attached to the grid and wired with mineral insulated cable and re-
wirable fuses. Over the years electricians have probably updated bits of this
leaving old wires in place behind walls and ceilings.

Then you have the walls which would initially be lath and lime based plasters,
with horse hair for strength and arsenic to stop the rats eating it. As these
buildings got more sealed up, windows improved and fireplaces boarded up the
condition of the plaster deteriorated. In places the plaster is patched with
modern gypsum based plasters which aren't really compatible with the naturally
porous building materials.

Even if all that is fixed and updated there is little or no insulation in the
construction of the building. Adding it internally can cause issues with
condensation buildup in the fabric of the building and is all but impossible
to achieve without fairly large cold bridges due to the existing construction.
Adding it externally can't be done without significantly altering the
appearance of the building.

If that is all dealt with you probably have accessibility issues with steps
and narrow door ways. Possibly fire safety issues etc.

~~~
CalRobert
Thank you for a well-informed comment that points out that old buildings are
at best a labrynthine nightmare of hacks and at worst a potential death trap.

Too few people moaning about what's happening to these buildings are willing
to pony up the cash to actually pay for it. Tell me, if _you_ had the choice
between paying 500k for a new, insulated, safe, building or 500k + much higher
insurance for an old, cold, dirty, impossible to work on building, which would
you pick? The former, of course, which is why "protecting" a building is
basically stealing a home from its owners (and why old listed structures can
be a dirt cheap adventure if you like a challenge)

I own and live in a protected structure (thatched cottage in Ireland). Here's
some of the issues.

1) The previous owner had "protection" foisted on them against their will.
This made their house and its land (aka "curtilage" basically worthless. I
paid next to nothing for it.

2) It's massively inefficient, and I need (difficult to get) planning
permission to upgrade the heating system. Imagine needing planning permission
to replace your boiler with a heat pump!!! I may be able to do a wood pellet
stove, but would really prefer heat pump (0 carbon). Right now it's an ancient
POS oil stove (looks neat, though I've grown to loathe it) - bit like
[http://www.handfenterprises.ie/products/details/wellstood-
tw...](http://www.handfenterprises.ie/products/details/wellstood-two-oven/28)
. I also am forbidden from using double-glazed windows, etc.

3) In the most technical, literal reading of the law, I literally cannot hang
a picture on the wall without planning permission (using a nail or drilling a
hole alters the original material, after all!) - of course nobody does this,
so instead everybody just has to guess what their council's particular
heritage officer cares about (some are damn-near gestapo like) and hope they
don't find themselves on their bad side.

3) I am not allowed to add windows or make them bigger. This is a problem
because only one of the windows is big enough to crawl out of, and there is
one door. In a fire we may well die

4) Not ONLY do I have to keep a "plaything for the rich" thatched roof, I have
to keep it _specifically_ in oaten straw, a material that decays quickly. It's
about 20k for a roof on this tiny, ~550 square foot house that will last, oh,
10 or 15 years. Thatch offers literally no advantage whatsoever over a modern
roof. At one time, it was what you used if you were poor and couldn't afford
anything else, because straw was a waste material, but now with combine
harvesters instead of traditional threshing and short-straw oat varieties you
can't use straw from normal oats, so you specifically grow oats to make straw
for roofs. In the UK I understand water reed is more commonly allowed, and it
can last several decades, but Ireland forbids it (in the midlands at lest).

5) House insurance is about 5X as expensive as it would be.

I knew all of these things before I bought the house, which is how I have a
place on a few acres a 15 minute bike ride through a nature preserve from a
train station rthat has commuter service to Dublin for under €70,000, but the
ONLY way this place makes sense is because I have an assumed resale value of 0
and can pretty much toss it in the bin and still come out ahead compared to
paying rent.

For the previous owner, "protection" was a complete disaster. Sadly the only
reason it got protected was because the last owner was too poor to upgrade it
before the law changed, and they could've benefited most of all from
increasing home values.

~~~
VBprogrammer
My house was built in the 1870s so I'm quite familiar with most of the things
I mentioned above! Thankfully it's not in a conservation area though. I
certainly think there needs to be a balance between the needs of modern
occupants of a building and the desire to preserve the heritage of traditional
buildings. If there isn't an acknowledgement of the need to modernise these
buildings they fall into near museum status. I don't think that is good for
modern day occupants or for those who would wish the home to be maintained
into the future.

~~~
CalRobert
It definitely isn't - protection is often the first step to a building falling
in to decay. That way you can get it delisted, hopefully.

This dilapidated mill was in horrible shape in street view 8 years ago, and
since then has rotted even further. It's dangerous and hideous, but it's
"protected" so it remains a huge burden on the town.

It's illegal to tear it down. You'd be a moron to put any money in to instead
of just building something else. But the heritage fetishists won't delist it
so it remains, an eyesore and attractive nuisance, which does wonders for
liability insurance no doubt.

[https://goo.gl/maps/r2STVqbRMLmbhDY3A](https://goo.gl/maps/r2STVqbRMLmbhDY3A)

Hell, imagine if we had protected status for codebases. "You could rewrite
this from scratch but dammit you're going to keep this in jQuery because
that's our heritage!

------
m-i-l
The ones where the old and new windows don't line up always seem a bit dumb.
Must be a horrible experience for the people inside the new buildings, looking
out of their windows onto a brick wall a few centimeters away. Both cited
examples of this (Artillery Lane and Caledonian Road) are student
accommodation, so I wonder if building at ultra-low cost has something to do
with it.

Many of the others I don't have a particular problem with to be honest.
There's actually one (not cited in the article) on the adjacent street to
where I live, but they're building the new house to match up with the old
facade so the nice Victorian era terrace isn't really disturbed. I'd much
rather that than what they've done on another adjacent street - some overseas
developer has bought one in the middle of a row of identical terraces, torn it
down, built an iceberg basement, and a big new "modern" building that looms
threateningly over the other buildings in the street like a largely windowless
slaughterhouse with odd disproportionately large misshapen windows in
improbable locations. I don't want to sound like Prince Charles with his
"monstrous carbuncles", and I accept that perhaps there may be some people
that somehow find that sort of "modern" building somehow aesthetically
appealing, but I can't see how anyone would possibly think it was in keeping
with the rest of the terrace either side, and have absolutely no idea how they
got planning permission in such a strict conservation area.

~~~
macca321
I think the Cally Road one won worst building of the year.

ah yes -
[https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/aug/29/carbunc...](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/aug/29/carbuncle-
cup-student-housing-ucl)

~~~
close04
These should only be legal if that facade is integrated into the new building,
not just a mask in front it. Yes, it's more work for the architects but
otherwise it defeats the whole point of the exercise.

~~~
Reason077
As a Londoner, I agree. Generally, I don't have any problem with historic
facades being integrated into modern buildings so long as it's done well.

Some of these examples, where the building was built behind the historic
facade with no attempt to integrate it at all, are apppaling and should never
have been allowed. The developers of these projects took advantage of
loopholes in planning laws.

In other examples from the article, like the College East, Wentworth Street
(Spitalfields E1) example, the historic facade has now been perfectly
integrated into the new development. In fact, it is a huge improvement on what
it looked like before:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5170618,-0.0722792,3a,75y,13...](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5170618,-0.0722792,3a,75y,131.01h,104.42t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sIJJrCtUYxcnZWeTHbicNkQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

(I cycle along this street every day!)

------
lordnacho
Classic:

[http://www.urban75.org/blog/the-fake-houses-
at-23-and-24-lei...](http://www.urban75.org/blog/the-fake-houses-
at-23-and-24-leinster-gardens-bayswater-london-w2/)

That one at least keeps the houses looking similar. For a lot of the ones in
the article I don't see how you are keeping thing aesthetically similar when
you put a huge monster building behind the facade.

------
King-Aaron
This is big in Western Australia, where a lot of our heritage buildings have
had their facades kept in place. Makes for a wonderful aesthetic.
[https://freoview.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/fantastic-
fremantl...](https://freoview.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/fantastic-fremantle-
facades/)

------
LeanderK
'Facadism' is also getting popular in germany and I think there are some
really nice examples here. If done well, i think it really achieves the best
of both worlds. The buildings fit in and preserve the atmosphere and character
of the city while also being modern, livable and built for their real purpose
on the inside. There are some examples where it's hard to tell that in fact
only the facade survived and the entire back got replaced, others archive a
good harmony between the old and the new. I think it's a great idea! But, as
always, poor executions can always be found (some examples can be found in the
article).

~~~
cs02rm0
_The buildings fit in and preserve the atmosphere and character of the city_

That's the questionable bit. I don't think they do, it's disjointed and
jarring. It has all the hallmarks of design by committee for me - everyone
gets their box ticked, but the overall picture is a shocking mess.

But then this is all subjective, so I guess you can't please everyone.

~~~
mcv
The examples in the article are disjointed and jarring, but there are many
buildings that get this approach right so you barely notice it's a new
building with an old facade.

Obviously the perpetrators of #2 and #4 in the article should never be allowed
to design a building ever again.

------
lelima
I live in Dublin and they do similar things but I haven't seen buildings not
aligned like Thomas Lloyd is pub's in the article.

Sometimes can be pleasing entering an "old facade" but inside everything is
brand new and modern.

------
DocG
Oh my god these are ugly.

I expected samples how new is incorporated into old but this free standing
facade is just plain ugly. Most of the houses seem to be built so at X moment
they can just tear the facade down, because it now looks ugly.

I personally would prefer incorporating new with old. Keep the old facade, but
it should be part of the house and working with the overall architecture.

~~~
52-6F-62
This surprised me too. Toronto does a lot of integration with older buildings.
People like it—at least better than just demolishing some beautiful or
historic architecture. That’s what I expected until the first photograph.

~~~
jdsully
I hate the new trend of preserving tacky neon signs. The Sam The Record Man
sign is just ugly. So was the Honest Eds sign (although that one is a bit
nicer).

------
darksaints
Outside of the most well-executed instances, facadism does one of two things.
It either highlights how terrible the new building behind it is, or it
highlights how terrible the old facade is in front of the new building. I
think the true legacy of Facadism will be that it illuminates the
ridiculousness of indiscriminate preservationism, much in the same way that
Brutalism and International Style illuminated the ridiculousness of trend
chasing.

You can take any survey of the most beautiful cities in the world and they
will all have something in common: they were beautiful long before urban
planning, historical preservation committees, or design review boards existed.
Their beauty is of one of evolution...the slow process of tearing old ugly
things down and building new things in their place, some of which may also be
ugly, but others which will become iconic to the point where nobody _wants_ to
tear them down. Democratic ideals shoved into beautification and preservation
processes will only ever result in the preservation of things that shouldn't
be preserved, and the construction of the lowest common denominator of putrid
architecture.

------
kome
This is horrible. Those photos are pure examples of architectural laziness.
There were so many ways to integrate those facades in a real modern building -
instead of keeping them outside as a pointless wall, prone to degradation.

At this point it would have been better to destroy everything.

Mixing old and new is an art... you need harmony between the two. And this
harmony is missing in those pics. Perhaps in other countries they are better
at it (italy? france? hungary?)

------
jalla
In Norway, the government protects heritage building's facade but allows for
the internals to be rebuilt to modern standards.

Sometimes this makes sense as the old buildings were extraordinarily energy
inefficient and preservation rules make it near impossible to insulate using
modern materials. Some buildings are uninhabitable or cannot meet modern
standards for environmental control yet are protected from demolition for
historic reasons.

Unfortunately, the loop holes are exploited to the maximum, making a mockery
of culture heritage preservation intentions. The government is responsible for
many of the re-development decisions, causing the arbitrariness of
architectural styles in some parts of the cities.

We've seen several buildings, in choice locations, be destroyed by
"accidental" fires because of cultural heritage preservation rules.

~~~
andrewjrhill
I live in Oslo and I am genuinely shocked at the quality of construction here
- so many corners are cut it is insane. They are not cheap either - we're
talking 15k to 25k NOK per month.

My offices are in a beautiful modern well known office district / tourist
hotspot and just yesterday one of the doorframes fell off the wall in the
kitchen.

My own apartment is 90sqm, modern and in a well known central "expensive" part
of town, was built only a few years ago, and the floor is so noticeably
slanted that my bedroom cupboard door will slide open on its own from time to
time.

The floorboards (whilst stunning) feel like they are built on-top of roots and
boulders - the cement was clearly not levelled properly before the boards were
placed.

I put a level on the kitchen counter and the bubble is obviously not centered.

On more than one occasion I have viewed apartments in Oslo where the master
bedroom is so small that the property owners have to put a door on either side
of the bed so you don't have to step over the bed to get out of the room.
These apartments were also in the 20k NOK range.

1 in 10 apartments have ceiling lights. Apparently Norwegians really like
standing lamps?

~~~
kwhitefoot
I have no ceiling lights in my house except for the kitchen and bathroom. Free
standing lights give me a lot more flexibility and a powerful uplighter gives
much better shadowless light than any ceiling light I have ever had.

I don't live in Oslo though, I don't think I could afford it. And though I
work for StatNett at the moment I work remotely and only have to go in once a
week or so for meetings so I don't have to deal with rush hour trains every
day. But if you can put up with commuting you can find much cheaper, much
bigger, places to live within quite easy commuting distance of Oslo.

------
twelvechairs
Images 2 and 4 are the worst - where they are trying to squeeze an extra floor
in so the new facade windows dont align with the old facade windows.

Images 6 and 7 are postmodern additions - maybe its not your style but they
aren't without architectural thought

The others are all standalone facades unclear what their final outcome will
be. Perhaps they were never of a good standard, were beyond repair at the time
or were taken away during construction. In any case just keeping the facade is
probably better than 50 years ago when theyd just demolish the whole thing.

~~~
altacc
The mismatch in floor heights is something I also find jarring. The changes in
standards mean that floor heights are reducing, leading to this. It'd have
cost them more to build matching floor heights and they might have had to have
one storey less to get planning permission.

Something similar happened near where I lived in London. Developers got
permission to build an apartment block on condition that it looked the same as
its older neighbour. The result was an odd looking mini version, about 2
metres shorter than the original.

~~~
mcv
For #2 and #4 it's not just the floor height, it's that they built a new
building while pretending the old facade wasn't there. It's just a random wall
standing in front of a completely unrelated building.

------
rekabis
This is… _sad_. I mean, if there is no other choice because restoration of the
building is no longer technically feasible, fine. But just to throw up
something bigger and newer? For shame.

~~~
Symbiote
I can't believe they build new buildings behind the façade where the windows
don't line up.

London's bigger problem is the shoddy quality (at all stages) of new
construction, in the unbound race for profit.

~~~
eru
The race for profit is pretty malleable. Just set up the taxes and other
incentives right, and people will do the right thing for profit.

~~~
afarrell
Taxes, incentives, and regulations don't directly achieve the goal. If the
real goal is a shift in company cultures across an industry, then there also
needs to be well-informed communication. Incentive structures can be part of
that communication[1]. But people don't obey incentives unless they keep those
incentives in conscious thought. If incentives were all it took for
organisations to pay the cost of changing priorities, then there would have
been no value in naming a bug "Heartbleed".

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/09/what-heartbleed-can-
tea...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/09/what-heartbleed-can-teach-the-
oss-community-about-marketing/)

~~~
eru
Who says incentives have to be purely monetary?

~~~
afarrell
Not me

------
nness
Context which might be missing is that the buildings shown here are some grade
of "listed buildings," where demolition prohibited under law for cultural or
historical reasons.

Whilst some of these examples are particularly ugly, it strikes an interesting
balance between maintaining the historically important aspects of the
building, whilst modernizing it (or at worst, preventing a safety risk).

What's fascinating is when the aesthetics of the past don't align with the
economics or building regulations today. Large windows and high-ceilings are
both energy in-efficient and waste a lot of potential square-metreage.

------
jccalhoun
I"m assuming that they need to keep the facade because of historic value or
something but why not attach it to the new building? Some are saying it is
laziness but it seems like it would take a lot of work to make sure this
freestanding wall is structurally sound. Not to mention all the extra work
having to clean two walls instead of just one (I guess it would actually be 3
different surfaces, the front and back of the facade and the front of the new
building). Of course, the architect won't be the one cleaning it...

So are they like this because someone thinks this looks good???

~~~
Mindwipe
Most of the time they do tbf, but these are mostly very bad examples.

------
galfarragem
Most times 'facadism' is not an architectural choice, is the only way to get a
permit to renovate a building. In case of doubt, 'gatekeepers' will always
leave it as it is.

And 'facadism' is not that new. In some English cities, around 1800, it was
common to get a land plot with an already built facade. It worked fairly well
as a way to keep unity while allowing fragmented private iniciative.

------
djohnston
The spotted dog is the best example imo. Seems like they thoughtfully
integrated old with new. But wtf is that atrocity on calendonian road?

------
altacc
Some of these designs are great and others show the laziness and focus on
cost-cutting in much of modern architecture. Just putting a new building
behind an old facade is not architecture, it's copy and pasting. The true
architects are those who manage to reuse the facade and fuse new and old into
something that blends and flows together.

~~~
afarrell
When I think about the delays to Crossrail, I feel compelled to defend
laziness, copy and pasting, and focus on cost-cutting.

It was originally scheduled to open in 2018[1] and is now not going to be
finished until well into 2021. Why? A large part of that is the work they need
to do in order to "manage to reuse the facade and fuse new and old into
something that blends and flows together"[2]

[1]
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50345344](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50345344)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qi046Xn6lA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qi046Xn6lA)

------
rhplus
For any non-Brits looking for a glimpse into the (multi-million pound)
challenges of converting London buildings into modern homes, check out Grand
Designs:

[https://www.netflix.com/title/80160755](https://www.netflix.com/title/80160755)

The Kennington water-tower conversion is a nice example (S10,E5).

------
grzte
If these are the worst examples they can find in the entire city of London,
I'd say things are not going so bad.

~~~
eru
Indeed. The topic itself is fascinating, but it doesn't seem like much too
complain about.

The ugly part is when they don't line up the windows. Otherwise, it's fine.

~~~
tomatocracy
There's also at least a potential aesthetic problem where the new building
behind the facade is taller than the facade, especially if it extends above by
a significant amount. That's very common indeed.

~~~
eru
I'm happy with that look. If you can't hide the change perfectly, I'd rather
the building be honest and blatant about being a hybrid.

But I can see how tastes differ.

~~~
tomatocracy
It varies in how well it’s done - much as with windows, some are very
sympathetic and others not. It’s also particularly noticeable for people who
occupy higher floors in other nearby buildings and I’m not sure this is often
considered in the planning process.

------
mcv
We've got some buildings like this in Amsterdam too. Sometimes it's done
really well, and I'm happy they managed to preserve a beautiful ancient facade
while updating the insides to modern standards for non-collapsing structures.
And sometimes it's an atrocity.

------
auiya
Many of these examples seem dangerous, like a place for water inclusion and
freezing/melting and rot. The examples where the buildings tie together well
aren't so bad. But the ones where the windows don't even line up?! Throw that
builder in the sea.

------
jlarcombe
That one on Stamford Street was there for decades as a very grand frontage to
a car park! It was quite weird walking past it. The new building behind it
doesn't 'work' with it at all, really.

------
Tade0
And I thought "eggshelling" (removing and rebuilding from scratch the insides
of a building) we had in Warsaw was bad.

To think it never occurred to anybody in the decision chain that this might be
a bad idea.

------
vearwhershuh
Well, I suppose it is slightly better than just bulldozing everything.

At least it gives the public some vague sense of what it was like when
architecture wasn't adversarial.

------
esotericn
I used to live in a Victorian townhouse made of 4 flats.

Opposite, inbetween some terraces, I suspect as a result of WW2 bombing, was a
council block. 5 floors in the same space as the 4.

So it goes.

------
SwellJoe
Most of these are trash.

I like old buildings, a lot, and I also understand that growth requires new
construction sometimes replace old buildings, but this is kind of the worst
possible outcome. It still destroys the old building, and puts an incoherent
one in its place. Some mergers of old and new are interesting and cohesive,
but it seems like there isn't even an attempt to make them work together in a
lot of cases.

------
senectus1
Seen this a _lot_ in Perth Western Australia in the last 10 years or so.

------
kylehotchkiss
Yerevan, Armenia really loves this style of building too

------
warrenmiller
You can blame Prince Charles for this

------
inception44
I thought 'Faragism' is in the rise.

