facadism

London blogger The Gentle Author has been photographing the changing face of London, focusing on what is known as "facadism", the practice of destroying everything apart from the front wall and constructing a new building behind it.

In her new book, “Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design,” she writes, “More often than not … the facade becomes visually engulfed by the new addition. If the alternative is complete demolition, then façadism supplies at least a weak sense of history and scale to the neighborhood, and no more.”

If you live in Seattle, you know what “façadism” means, even if you’ve never heard of it.

For him the idea of facadism is looking like "the number one possibility at the moment".

At best this results in projects like the Evergreen Building; at worst token façadism.