Facadism

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.

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.

Despite being highly controversial and denounced by many preservationists as vandalism, facadism is used as the demand for new development is overwhelming community desires for preservation.

While the controversial practice of facadism is encouraged by governments in some cities (such as Toronto and Brisbane), it is actively discouraged in others (such as Paris and Sydney).

In Australia, the Burra Charter, which sets out the principles and procedures to be followed when conserving heritage places, does not have any policies which specifically deal with facadism.

The central city of Sydney sported numerous examples of historic buildings reduced to facades as part of the development boom of the 1980s.

In 2012 the huge Myer Store on Lonsdale Street in the city was reduced to a highly visible propped facade to allow the construction of a shopping center.

Another notorious example was the Queensland Country Life Building (1888) which was reduced to a facade in 1991, and left as a remnant for many years until a development was built behind in 2006.

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 .
An early example of facadism. The Old Commerce building at the University of Melbourne is the relocated facade of a Collins Street bank which was superimposed on the front of a "new" campus building in the 1930s.