Objective Facadism is an adaptive reuse approach — removing internal redundancies and remodeling heritage buildings while preserving their historic façades. Criticized but also widely applied in heritage practice, the concept of Facadism has evolved towards heritage conservation principles, leaving important examples for heritage practitioners involved in the conservation and transformation practice of historic urban landscapes in contemporary metropolitan development. Historic urban landscapes and built cultural heritage therein have become key drivers for urban renewal in many historic towns and regions worldwide. Since the 1980s, to alleviate housing pressures, Facadism has become a common adaptive reuse approach evolving to balance historic landscape conservation and urban development in real estate developments in North America, and has been controversial due to the physical destruction of heritage authenticity. In China, an adaptive reuse approach similar to Facadism has also come to the forefront since the late 1990s through the practice of conservation and renovation in the Xintiandi redevelopment project in Shanghai. The Facadism approach reflects the tension between conservation and development, history and modernity, and tradition and innovation, launching a call for in-depth research.

Methods/process  This research first analyzes the theoretical origins of Facadism and its evolution in heritage discourse by understanding and defining it. It also studies the impact generated by Facadism on heritage authenticity in practice. Secondly, since many cases of Toronto’s Facadism practice have received widespread recognition for their treatment of building − street linkage, this research identifies and reviews typical cases with the aim of exploring the factors that make Facadism successful in a particular context. By tracing the evolution of Facadism practice on Toronto’s Yonge Street over the course of the 21st century, the research reveals why Facadism has become the default strategy for adaptive reuse of historic buildings in Toronto, and its multiple impacts on heritage values, genius loci, collective identity, spatial perception, urban development and social justice. By reviewing public discussions, municipal decisions and theoretical perspectives, this research aims to analyze and explain the potential reasons for the successful practices of the Facadism strategy in adaptive reuse and its evolutionary path during implementation. To further explore the theoretical applicability of the concept of Facadism in China’s urban renewal under contextual transformation, this research introduces Shanghai’s extensive adaptive reuse practices and the use of related terms for comparative analysis.

Results/conclusion  Through an analysis of the adaption of the Bank of Montreal, the McLaughlin Showroom, and a row of Victorian buildings, this research categorizes the façade-led design strategies for adding high-rises on existing historic buildings into three groups: Sheet mode, podium mode, and attachment mode. The research also identifies similar approaches in adaptive reuse practices in Shanghai, such as the redevelopment of Jianyeli, Shangxianfang, and arcades on East Jinling Road. However, this research notes that although practitioners have used Facadism approache in Shanghai’s heritage adaption, the term “Facadism” is not introduced and known to the academia and the general public as a term or a keyword to describe a retrofitting strategy. Furthermore, in the China Knowledge Network database, there is no evidence of any papers or other results related to “Facadism” through keyword search. This research further suggests that the general idea of “adaptive reuse” for summarizing various heritage approaches can directly lead to two drawbacks in heritage conservation practice. On the one hand, it allows stakeholders to obfuscate concepts, to use slogans such as “conservation development” to disguise actual destructive operation of heritage in a speculative manner and to lower the public’s psychological line of defense against the destruction of cultural heritage. On the other hand, this leads to a lack of respect for the designation of significant heritage and conservation planning by stakeholders, requiring adjustments of legally valid conservation planning in implementation. This research further argues that the most alarming aspect of Facadism approach is not its outcome, but the impact on the integrated conservation of historic landscapes and the choice of values in the extensive urbanism process. In China’s post-2021 urban renewal, an increasing number of historic blocks, neighborhoods, and roads selected into the heritage list are facing the challenge of being transformed. This research argues for the introduction of more pragmatically oriented adaptive reuse concepts in contemporary urban renewal in China, preventing the hybridization and misuse of conservation concepts by stakeholders and maintaining the purity of heritage conservation principles. Overall, this research emphasizes the implications of Facadism in contemporary urban renewal from the perspective of heritage integrity and authenticity of the conservation of historic urban landscape.