It is said that, in 1787, during a visit of the Empress Catherine II to Crimea, Prince Grigorij Aleksandrovic Potëmkin had entire façades made of cardboard and painted to show fictitious villages and conceal the appalling poverty of the lands she was passing through. After that, the expression ”Potëmkin village” became the common way to describe a structure or a façade designed to conceal the real conditions inside or suggest a situation different from what was really going on behind it.

We don’t know if this is a true story or not; what we can certainly learn from it, however, is that the role of the façade, in architecture, has always held a significance that goes well beyond its merely structural function. The façade acquires a powerful symbolic value, particularly in certain historical period – one thinks of the Renaissance, the Baroque period, the Modern Movement and, in particular, of Postmodernism – where the façade, through its impressive verticality in the urban landscape, becomes an expression of power, social representation and wealth. Aldo Rossi summed it up perfectly: ”The façade is the shape of the city, its meeting place and the substance of our collective memory”.

Area has dealt with the topic of façades several times in the past already, as it is such an essential element in the architectural composition. We even devoted an entire monographic issue to it (Area 142, Façade, September- October 2015). In that issue, we investigated how the architectural ”face” becomes a privileged terrain for study, experimentation and construction of the project identity, especially in relation to the context in which it is located.

We can say with absolute certainty that the element of the façade, in particular, gained increasing relevance with the introduction of so-called ”curtain-walls”, which have been able to make use of modern construction systems and materials capable of enhancing the expressive power of the architectural idea to a much greater extent than would have been conceivable, for example, during the Renaissance. Thanks to the many modern innovations it incorporates, the façade becomes a separate entity, a formal element like any other part of the architectural organism. We need think only of the Fagus-Werkdi by Walter Gropius (1911) and the Bauhaus Building in Dessau (1926), but even of more recent projects like the façade of the Kunsthaus Bregenz by Peter Zumthor or the Opera House in Oslo by the Norwegian studio Snøhetta. The façade, in other words, is not merely an ornamental element – much less an exercise of style – but a threshold of connection between the public and the private dimensions.

Through the selection of projects presented in this latest issue, it becomes clear that, while the materials, techniques and expressive languages have changed, the significance of the façade remains the same. It is where the architecture reveals itself to the city, establishing relationships, communicating values and contributing to the definition of the collective identity of its location.