Facade Detail from the façade of the Nikonov Building in Saint Petersburg A facade (also façade; /fəˈsɑːd/ ( About this sound listen )) is generally one exterior side of a building, usually the front. It is a foreign loan word from the French façade, 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. For historical facades, many local zoning regulations or other laws greatly restrict or even forbid their alteration. Etymology The word comes from the French foreign loan word façade, which in turn comes from the Italian facciata, from faccia meaning face, ultimately from post-classical Latin facia. The earliest usage recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is 1656. Facades added to earlier buildings 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. 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. Highrise facades In modern highrise 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 (powdercoated or anodized) or stainless steel (at St. Petersburg, Russia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPOSUgjDu_l/?utm_medium=tumblr
