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False front

In architecture, the false front (also false facade, flying facade, screen wall) is a façade designed to disguise the true characteristics of a building, usually to beautify it. The architectural design and purposes of these wall-like features vary:

  • making a building appear larger, more important, and better-built, like in the Western false front architecture, German ' () or Brick Gothic main facades (Schaufassaden, ). Some sources also use the term screen facade () when discussing the Medieval and Renaissance churches, not to be confused with the modern "membrane" screen facade;
  • creating a fake appearance to improve aesthetics, an architectural equivalent of trompe-l'oeil;
  • in facadism, keeping the old facades with the goal of preserving the visual character of a historical neighborhood while allowing an entirely modern design of the actual buildings. In the view of preservationists, this creates a "Disneyland of false fronts";
  • deliberate violation of the truth to materials principle ("false in material") for economical, insulation, or aesthetic purposes, like masonry veneer using a non-structural outer layer of stone or a membrane screen facade;
  • hiding a gable roof, like a tall parapet wall, as opposed to ;
  • a purely decorative way to increase height, like the one of a roof comb, a flat structure that tops buildings in Mesoamerican architecture. Sometimes the comb was shifted from the center of the roof to one of the walls, forming a flying facade.

Tradition of "show facades" goes back to the very beginnings of the architecture, when the simplest buildings might have just one opening serving both as a door and a window. The special role of the wall with this opening was stressed through articulation and decoration.

Outside of architecture, "false front" is used to describe a deceptive outward appearance in general, false hair in front (like bangs).

Facadism

Show facades

In the Brick Gothic, the Schaufassaden (, display facades), the facades facing the main street, were richly decorated and frequently concealed the cross-section structure of the building.

Lombard architecture

In Lombard Gothic architecture, the facciata a vento () is a type of screen facade where the stone facing rises higher than the roofline, characterized by windows (often the round oculi) that open into the empty sky ("sfondanti sul cielo"). Angiola Maria Romanini identified these "windows breaking into the sky" as a defining stylistic hallmark of the region's Gothic architecture.

While the church of San Francesco in Brescia (c. 1254) was traditionally considered the prototype of this style, recent stratigraphical analysis suggests that the upper section of its facade is a later addition. Instead, the Basilica of San Francesco in Bologna (completed 1263) is likely the true innovative prototype of the facciata a vento.

The facciata a vento reduces the building's front to a two-dimensional screen, replacing the earlier Romanesque tradition of the elaborately 3D-sculpted (screen facade). Following its introduction by the Mendicant orders, the style became a distinctively Lombard phenomenon, spreading to Cremona Cathedral, Monza Cathedral, and the (now demolished) Santa Maria della Scala in Milan. The style eventually migrated to the Adriatic coast, influencing architecture in the Marche region.

Western false front architecture

See also

References

Sources