façade

1. The face of a building, especially the principal face.
2. An artificial or deceptive front: ideological slogans that were a façade for geopolitical power struggles.

[French, from Italian facciata, from faccia, face, from Vulgar Latin *facia, from Latin faciēs.]

(fuh-SAHD)
noun

1. The face of a building, especially the principal face.

2. An artificial or deceptive front.

[French, from Italian facciata, from faccia, face, from Vulgar Latin *facia, from Latin facies.]

Usage:

"To cover the ugliness, he built a colorful plywood facade of an irregular shape, outlined with wide bands of orange and green and bearing the admonition: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Repair. The facade has holes through which recyclers will throw their items." — Marianna Riley, 5 Art Projects Decorate City, Washington U. Students Show Creativity, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 22 Apr 1996. "`The name sounds innocuous,' he said, `but lurking behind the facade is a white supremacist group.'" — Kate Harries, `Heritage' week halted, The Toronto Star, 14 Oct 1998.

Outside front wall of a building.

The outside front wall of a building.
Examples: Facade materials for a building include:

• aluminum

• brick

• glass

• masonry

• wood

noun

1. The forward outer surface of a building: face, front, frontage, frontal. Architecture frontispiece. See precede/follow.
2. A deceptive outward appearance: cloak, color, coloring, cover, disguise, disguisement, face, false colors, front, gloss, guise, mask, masquerade, pretense, pretext, semblance, show, veil, veneer, window-dressing. Slang put-on. See show/hide.

Definition: appearance, often deceptive
Antonyms: character, personality

‘Entertainment’ by Walton for reciter and ensemble, to poems by Edith Sitwell (1921); it has undergone several revisions and Walton made two orchestral suites from it.

The exterior face of a building which is the architectural front, sometimes distinguished from the other faces by elaboration of architectural or ornamental details.

Ballet in one act with choreography by Ashton, music by Walton, and design by John Armstrong. Premiered 26 Apr. 1931 by the Camargo Society at the Cambridge Theatre, London, with Lopokova, Ashton, and Markova. Walton's score was originally composed as a setting for Edith Sitwell's witty poems but is here used on its own to accompany Ashton's series of choreographic satires on popular dance forms and their dancers (Scotch Rhapsody, Yodelling Song, Polka, Foxtrot, Waltz, Popular Song, Tango, Tarantella). With its mix of succinct observation and absurdity the ballet was an immediate hit, and was taken into the repertories of Ballet Rambert and later the Vic-Wells Ballet. It is still danced by both the Royal and Birmingham Royal Ballets though some consider that its comedy has coarsened over the years. It has also been revived by several other companies, including City Center Joffrey Ballet (1969), Australian Ballet (1972), and Teatro Regio Ballet (1992). An earlier version was choreographed by Gunter Hess in Hagen, Germany.

For other uses, see facade (disambiguation).

Facade of the Strasbourg Cathedral, Strasbourg, France

A facade or façade (pronounced /fəˈsɑːd/) is generally one side of the exterior of a building, especially the front, but also sometimes the sides and rear. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face".

In architecture, the facade of a building is often the most important from a design standpoint, as it sets the tone for the rest of the building. Many facades are historic, and local zoning regulations or other laws greatly restrict or even forbid their alteration.

Contents 1 Highrise facades 2 Film sets 3 Gallery 4 Figurative meaning 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading

Highrise facades

Interior of a suspended precast concrete facade with incomplete firestop made of stuffed rockwool.

In modern highrise buildings, the exterior walls are often suspended from the concrete floor slabs. Examples include curtain walls and precast concrete walls. The facade can at times be required to have a fire-resistance rating, for instance, if two buildings are very close together, to lower the likelihood of fire spreading from one building to another.

Whether rated or not, fire protection is always a design consideration both in terms of concern for the subject building as well as for the surroundings, as falling glass can endanger pedestrians, firefighters and firehoses below. An example of this is the First Interstate Bank Fire in Los Angeles, California. The fire here leapfrogged up the tower by shattering the glass and then consuming the aluminium skeleton holding the glass. Aluminium's melting temperature is 660 °C, whereas building fires can reach 1,100 °C. The melting point of aluminium is typically reached within minutes of the start of a fire. Firestops for such building joints can be qualified to UL 2079 -- Tests for Fire Resistance of Building Joint Systems. Sprinklering of each floor has a profoundly positive effect on the fire safety of buildings with curtain walls. In the case of the aforementioned fire, it was specifically the activation of the newly installed sprinkler system, which halted the advance of the fire and allowed effective suppression.

Some building codes also limit the percentage of window area in exterior walls. When the exterior wall is not rated, the perimeter slab edge becomes a junction where rated slabs are abutting an unrated wall. For rated walls, one may also choose rated windows and fire doors, to maintain that wall's rating.

Film sets

On a film set, many of the buildings are only facades, which are far cheaper than actual buildings, and not subject to building codes. These are simply held up with supports from behind, and sometimes have boxes for actors to step in and out of from the front if necessary for a scene.

Gallery

The facade at Bletchley Park, United Kingdom is a mix of architectural styles.

Prague.

Facade of the town hall in Chojna, Poland.

Prairie Lights Bookstore, Iowa City, facade designed to resemble a human face.

Figurative meaning

The word can be used as a figure of speech to describe the "face" that people show other people. An example of this might be a person who seems very professional and organized on the outside, but is really feeling very disorganised and stressed.

See also

• Curtain wall
• Double-skin facade
• Facadism
• Potemkin village

References

Façades: Principles of Construction. By Ulrich Knaack, Tillmann Klein, Marcel Bilow and Thomas Auer. Boston/Basel/Berlin: Birkhaüser-Verlag, 2007. ISBN 978-3-7643-7961-2 (German) ISBN 978-3-7643-7962-9 (English)

Further reading

• Poole, Thomas (1909), "Façade", The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 5., New York: Robert Appleton Company . The article outlines the development of the façade in ecclesiatical architecture from the early Christian period to the Renaissance.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - facade, paradeforestilling

Nederlands (Dutch)
façade, voorgevel

Français (French)
n. - façade, (fig) façade (littér)

Deutsch (German)
n. - Fassade

Italiano (Italian)
facciata, apparenza

Português (Portuguese)
n. - fachada (f) (Arquit.), falsa aparência

Русский (Russian)
фасад

Español (Spanish)
n. - fachada, frontispicio

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - fasad (äv. bildl.)

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) واجهه المبنى , مظهر فاسد‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮חזית, חזות‬

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