ABSTRACT
A facade is generally the first thing one sees when looking at a building. Exploration of the facade continues as one move around it. The facades of a building may not all be the same. Facades have comes tumbling down from time to time, usually when attacked by seismic activity: both ‘heavy’ facades as in San Franciscoin 1906, or Napier in 1931 and Christchurch eighty years later, being largely unreinforced stone or brick. Thomas Hertzog et al. talk about a building being a ‘large technical object’ and its facade being a ‘structural sub-system’ of that, a system which requires consideration of and solutions to bioclimatic factors involving high-level performance design criteria for functional/technical/aesthetic matters. The structure is likely to be the skeleton on which a facade is hung, placed within or is directly supportive of. The skeleton can be behind, in plane with or external to the facade.
