Thursday, November 14, 2019

It's all just a front

What's worse than razing architectural heritage to make way for boring modern buildings? Keeping just their facades, in an attempt to appease those opposed to demolition and at the same time lend the new constructions a veneer of prestige and character.

Blogger The Gentle Author has been chronicling the trend in his native London, and now some of the worst examples from the book The Creeping Plague Of Ghastly Facadism have been named and shamed on the BBC website. It comes as little surprise to see that at least two of them have been colonised by Costa.

Cardiff has a particularly egregious example in the form of Altolusso, the gargantuan luxury apartment block on Bute Terrace that has retained the facade of the New College. The effect is bizarre, with the bland new development belittling the building that used to stand on the same site.

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