A facade (also façade; /fəˈsɑːd/(listen))^[1] is generally one exterior side of a building, usually the front. It is a foreign loan word from the Frenchfaçade (pronounced [fasad]), which means 'frontage' or 'face'.

In architecture, the facade of a building is often the most important aspect from a design standpoint, as it sets the tone for the rest of the building. From the engineering perspective of a building, the facade is also of great importance due to its impact on energy efficiency.^[2] For historical facades, many local zoning regulations or other laws greatly restrict or even forbid their alteration.

Jul 05, 2017  Facade is a part of Gang of Four design pattern and it is categorized under Structural design patterns. Before we dig into the details of it, let us discuss some examples which will be solved by this particular Pattern.

Etymology[edit]

The word comes from the French foreign loan word façade, which in turn comes from the Italianfacciata, from faccia meaning face, ultimately from post-classical Latin facia. The earliest usage recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is 1656.^[3]

Facades added to earlier buildings[edit]

It was quite common in the Georgian period for existing houses in English towns to be given a fashionable new facade. For example, in the city of Bath, The Bunch of Grapes in Westgate Street appears to be a Georgian building, but the appearance is only skin deep and some of the interior rooms still have Jacobean plasterwork ceilings.^[4]

This new construction has happened also in other places: in Santiago de Compostela the 3-metres-deep Casa do Cabido was built to match the architectural order of the square, and the main Churrigueresque facade of the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, facing the Praza do Obradoiro, is actually encasing and concealing the older Portico of Glory.

High rise facades[edit]

In modern high rise building, 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.

In general, the facade systems that are suspended or attached to the precast concrete slabs will be made from aluminium (powder coated or anodized) or stainless steel. In recent years more lavish materials such as titanium have sometimes been used, but due to their cost and susceptibility to panel edge staining these have not been popular.

Whether rated or not, fire protection is always a design consideration. The melting point of aluminium, 660 °C (1,220 °F), is typically reached within minutes of the start of a fire. Fire stops for such building joints can be qualified, too. Putting fire sprinkler systems on each floor has a profoundly positive effect on the fire safety of buildings with curtain walls.

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 and theme parks[edit]

On a film set and within most themed attractions, many of the buildings are only facades, which are far cheaper than actual buildings, and not subject to building codes (within film sets). In film sets, they 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. Within theme parks, they are usually decoration for the interior ride or attraction, which is based on a simple building design.

Examples[edit]

• Part of the Central University Library of Bucharest (Romania)

• The facade at Bletchley Park (UK) is a mix of architectural styles

• Detail of a façade from Prague (Czech Republic) Even when i'm with my boo.

• Façade of the town hall in Chojna (Poland)

• Façade of a house from Ansbach (Germany)

• The Haunted Mansion in Disneyland consists of a building and facade in the front, while the majority of the ride is outside the park in a connected building

• 'Energetic rebuilding of a facade' (Germany): The outer walls are torn off and replaced at one wing of the building at a time while the other wing part is still/again in use

• Fantasy Gardens (British Columbia) was a theme park with an exterior designed to resemble many different medieval buildings

• Facade of a typical 'Casa Chorizo' house with different ornaments and colors in Buenos Aires (Argentine)

• Detail of the glass facade of 'Neues Kranzler Eck' by Helmut Jahn, located in Berlin

• Facade of a 1st century CE Roman domus in Pompeii

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

1. ^dictionary.cambridge.org
2. ^Boswell, Keith. 'Exterior Building Enclosures'. John Wiley & sons, Inc, 2013, p. 11
3. ^'façade, n.'. Oxford English dictionary (Second, online ed.). Oxford University Press. December 2011 [1989].(subscription required)
4. ^Jean Manco. Bath's lost era, 'Bath and the Great Rebuilding', Bath History vol. 4, (Bath 1992). First published in Bath City Life Summer 1992. Retrieved 22 June 2010

References[edit]

• Façades: Principles of Construction. By Ulrich Knaack, Tillmann Klein, Marcel Bilow and Thomas Auer. Boston/Basel/Berlin: Birkhaüser-Verlag, 2007. ISBN978-3-7643-7961-2 (German) ISBN978-3-7643-7962-9 (English)

Further reading[edit]

• Poole, Thomas (1909). 'Façade' . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. 5. New York: Robert Appleton Company. The article outlines the development of the facade in ecclesiastical architecture from the early Christian period to the Renaissance.

Let's understand why we need a facade design pattern. Take a sly look at an image below. Right-hand side class only needs to call four methods.

But we'll likely need to examine and dig around in the internals of mud class (leftmost classA) to determine which four they are. Or I can place a facade between my classes andn now the facade has an internal reference to the classA and orchestrates calls on behalf of our program. We're using a facade class to contain the classA and only expose the methods needed by our program.

We can use more meaningful method names plus our program only talks to the facade without knowing about the classA at all. You'll have to go through all of the mud of classes to reImplement smartPhone. Here we only have 3 classes (Display, Memory, Processor) but in a real-life project, as I said there would be hundreds of classes which make it difficult to look for classes which are needed to implement a new smartPhone.we can add a middle layer which acts as a facade for our smartphone, which will take care of all the functionalities that needed to make a smartphone. To make our pattern more advance we can add one interface through which our smartPhone class will interact.