Breathtakingly ugly preservationism!

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Dumarest

Vaquero de Alta California
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Or at least I think they all look terrible:
I'd never heard of this practice before.
 
Honestly, it's probably better than the alternative--not all buildings can practically survive based on their age and the needs of modern businesses. At least facadism is a better way to keep the charm and look of the metropolitan areas while also modernizing the needs. If they didn't do this, it's likely many of those changes might require destroying the whole thing.
 
When I lived in France, I heard many people complain that the centre of Paris had become an architectural tomb due to very stringent requirements to preserve older buildings. There was talk about things like this as a way to get around it.
 
Or at least I think they all look terrible:
I'd never heard of this practice before.
London has more historic buildings than you can poke a stick at, and there is an outfit of busybodies called English Heritage that have the power to slap arbitrary preservation orders on buildings that they see as having some architectural merit or historical significance. You will quite often see a building in a real-estate site described as 'Grade II listed.'

There are major restrictions on what can be done with listed buildings. For example, if you have a listed house with a thatched roof, you are on the hook for maintaining the roof, which consists of replacing it with another thatched roof every 40 years or so, a process which costs as much as a new luxury car. You can have restrictions on what colour interiors may be painted and a whole raft of such conditions. Demolishing the building is typically right out.

London is also one of the most expensive cities in the world to build in and has some of the most expensive office space in the world. Getting permission to build can also be quite nightmarish, as the planning process is practically set up to facilitate interference from nimbies and allow interested parties to force conditions on the approval. There are also loads of other legacy planning regulations such as 'protected views' - look up the 'Cheese Grater' for a discussion of the effect of this little gem on town planning in London.

Thus, facades like this become a way to throw a bone to a sort of aggressive NIMBY demographic who want to see London preserved as-is. You get to build a modern building that has useful attributes like being structurally sound while making it look like the old historic building that sits in the comfort zone of the nostalgia set.

An example of this is the old Lloyd's Register building, which is best known for making an appearance on the short film at the beginning of The Meaning of Life. Some years ago I had occasion to work in that building. The wing on the corner of Lloyd's Ave is actually a part of the old building (and has windows that open), but most of the front facade is just left there and a new building has been built behind it.

Buildings like this tend to look odd when you find the right angle to show the facade in a photo, but from the street it's not normally obvious unless you know what you're looking for. Like most camouflage it's good enough to fool the casual observer..

EastIndiaArms.jpg

Lloyd's Register Building facade concealed by East India Arms
LloydsRegisterFront.jpg

Facade seen from in front of the main entrance
LloydsRegisterEast.jpg

And the East wing of the building on Lloyd's Avenue
New LR Building.jpg


And the actual building that has been built in behind the facade (note that this a rendering from Google Maps)
 
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