Another application of architectural camouflage appeases public sensiti - ity to unsightly programs: urban infrastructural facilities —electric sub- stations for example— are usually situated at important locations within an urban network. The architectural surface then deceives to maintain a certain public image consistent with a prevailing notion of civic rectitude— to keep up appearances, as it were. A subway ventila- tion facility in Paris is essentially a very large chimney built behind a historic hotel façade ( above ), and a suburban Winnipeg bungalow ( see back cover ) contains a flood-pumping station: both examples of ‘unsightly’ infrastructure installations that are camouflaged in their unsuspecting surroundings. Camouflage can be applied directly over existing buildings that have a problematic history to literally cover up that history. The new surface layer deceives to promote a new public image. A World War II military hospital in Brigham City, Utah ( page 15 ), subsequently used as a residential school for Native Americans, has recently been renovated by a private developer into new-urbanist row housing, is an example of a transformative and paint-thin application of camouflage designed to sell a new public image. A ventilation flue for the Paris metro built in 1982 behind the retained historical façade of a small hotel that formerly occupied the site.There are no floors behind the windows, only maintenance catwalks.The flue extends several stories into the ground, and contains large fans that pump fresh air into the underworld of Paris. A series of louvres prevents birds and falling objects from getting caught in the fans.
New buildings with disjunctive elevations are just as disingenuous. Since the dichotomy here is planned from the outset, there is a suspicion that a surface is being used to mislead.A disjunctive façade could simply be a designer’s conceit, while camouflage entails that something is being deliberately hidden.The context of content—what is inside and its relationship to what is outside — is therefore a crucial factor in the identification of cases of architectural camouflage. The most common rationale for camouflage is the desire for privacy, particularly in the case of clandestine activity, in which case the architec- tural façade functions literally as its deceptive ‘front’.Two examples here are the seventeenth-century Catholic church of Our Lord in the Attic ( left ), which was built into a typical canal house in Amsterdam during the Calvinist rebellion against Catholicism, and a recently exposed mari- juana-growing operation in suburban Montreal that was concealed in dozens of new tract houses which, investigators believe, may have been specifically built for this purpose. Conversely, camouflage could also be used to avert crime, where the architectural surface deceives to prevent the contents and occupants of a building from being targeted by criminals.An example here is the residence of Hollywood actor, artist and collector Dennis Hopper in Venice, California ( see page 15 ), designed by Brian A. Murphy, and which urban theorist Mike Davis has termed a ‘stealth home’ for its resemblance to a shed.
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