Power or Pain - Facadism

Andy Song

The addition to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) -- the "Crystal" -- is perhaps one of the most hated buildings in Toronto. It has been criticized as both ugly and useless, with the slanted walls and corners inside troubling the museum curators, and the stark, angled metallic exterior tarnishing the original ROM facade. The controversy around the Crystal highlights a larger hot topic in the architecture of Toronto: facadism, the preservation of facades while constructing new buildings behind.

Benefits

Facadism in Toronto has mainly resulted from a desire to preserve the city's heritage while making advances in infrastructure. Driving and walking through downtown Toronto, I saw numerous facadism projects in progress, with large skeletal scaffolding engulfing the historical facades of old buildings, offices and churches.

Many of Toronto's older buildings share roots with its British past, with styles popular around the 19th century like Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian. By practicing facadism, Toronto preserves the appearance of its older architectural styles to keep the city's niche. Other megacities around the world like Shenzhen, China, where the downtown architecture mostly consists of sleek, ultra-modern skyscrapers, are struggling to preserve their heritage and history.

Furthermore, facadism removes the need for a new facade design, so architects and engineers can simply focus on the functionality of the building, or interior aesthetics. This is much cheaper than preserving the entire building, so the building can be efficiently upgraded while keeping the same appearance.

Power or Pain?

So if facadism preserves a city's heritage AND saves money and effort, why is it getting so much shade from the architectural community?

A lot of the time, facadism projects are criticized for being inauthentic, lazy excuses by developers who don't want to put in the time and investment to actually preserve the original building. Queen-Richmond Centre West, one of the more well-received conservationist projects in Toronto, built an 11-storey glass tower over a 1912 old bakery building; the old bakery building is not only in its original condition, but also used as functional space. This project innovatively preserves Toronto's heritage with authenticity and space efficiency.

However, not all buildings are able to be recycled like the old bakery building of the Queen-Richmond Centre West. This leaves an interesting challenge for developers exploring heritage preservation. Whether they choose to recycle the building, preserve just the facade, or even use unorthodox, innovative solutions like making the old building's materials into a monument, I personally believe any effort to preserve the city of Toronto's heritage is a step in the right direction.