Facadism in Brussels
Facadism is the practice of keeping façade of deconstructed building. The main purpose of Facadism is to preserve urban historic property for future generation and people can own more chances to recognize the context of specific city history. It also releases land of property uses to fulfill contemporary architecture function. The main supporter of facadism is the city government who care traditional value. Currently, this strategy is popular and occurred at several cities such as Rotterdam, Moscow, Paris, Detroit, New York, and Boston. It normally creates an amazing view of city, enhancing the diverse experience of urban environment.
Moreover, the façade details are very fragile. It is very easy to be broken in the demolishing and reconstructing process. How to protect it in these processes is a huge challenge for architects. However, facadism also receives so many criticisms. Some architects thought when new building is designed poorly and intensively, we should keep the historical building not only the facade. Facadism also introduces an idea for contrast between new building and old building. For example, in New York, Hearst Tower uses traditional facade for base under curtain wall skyscraper. This strategy preserve original context for urban elevation and provide higher floor ratio rate of land use.
Facadism in New York: Hearst Tower
Resources: Wikipedia
Yang Yu Huang
Yang Yu Huang
This is a very interesting debate, and I am interested to hear your opinion on this. Would you support facadism in your hometown or a downtown you are familiar with?
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