The world is full of architectural fake overs, from individual facades to entire buildings designed to look like something other than what they really are. Historically, some of these disguises have been less well-intentioned than others. During World War II, Nazis gave the Red Cross access to a concentration camp but they controlled the experience, putting up false fronts to make it seem more humane. Along similarly duplicitous lines, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez reportedly had workers paint the bottoms of potholes along the routes taken by foreign dignitaries to disguise the degree of road disrepair.

When President Vladimir Putin was scheduled to visit a largely abandoned town, entire vernacular facade-covering banners were hung over rundown building exteriors. Colorful faux painted walls, windows and even cats were draped over the sides of derelict structures. Some of these quirky examples may sound outdated or limited to extreme regimes, but similar trickery can be found around the world. In anticipation of an upcoming G8 summit in 2013, for instance, closed storefront windows in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland were populated with images depicting open businesses stocked with goods, an illusion set up to impress visitors.

Sometimes, subterfuge is about making something look better, a kind of economic camouflage, but it can also be about political or military concealment. In World War II, a the entire rooftop of a Seattle airplane manufacturing plant was covered with a fake suburb complete with plywood streets, sidewalks, trees and houses. This elaborate deception was erected to conceal a vital piece of wartime infrastructure, confusing potential enemy spy planes and bombers that might pass overhead. In hindsight, attacks on the American mainland might sound improbable, but in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack the people in power were taking no chances.

Many misleading designs are less elaborate but also far more prevalent than most people realize. Hiding in plain sight in cities like New York, London, Paris and Toronto, among others, some architectural facades have been used to cover up infrastructure including sewer and subway exhaust vents. In other cases, entire fake buildings have been built as shells around around facilities like electrical substations. Similar strategies have been employed to reduce the appearance of blight in cities including Cincinnati, Cleveland and Chicago, where fake interior scenes have been applied to boarded-up windows on homes and businesses.

Not all of these fakes are meant to distort reality or create believable illusions. Test track villages in places like Ann Arbor, Michigan, for instance, are used to help study road conditions and try out new autonomous vehicle technologies.

There are also “Hogan’s Alleys” around the world — fake towns made for training police, military and other emergency personnel by setting up simulated crimes, riots and terrorist attacks in semi-realistic built environments. Some of these can be quite detailed, like Survival Town, an entire development complete with furniture and mannequins built simply to be blown in bomb tests. Whatever their particular form and intended level of deception, all of these fake places share a common designation — and so-called “Potemkin Villages” have a strangely compelling origin story.

The Original Potempkin Village

A Potempkin Village is a false front designed to cover facts with fictions, painting a better picture (literally or otherwise) over the face of a less attractive reality. The name comes from governor Grigory Potemkin who, as the story goes, wanted to impress his former lover, Russian Empress Catherine II, as she toured the Crimean countryside in the wake of war. To win her approval, he concocted one of the craziest architectural plans in history, involving the erection of entire portable villages at various locations along the way. These fake towns would be disassembled when her delegation passed by on a barge and then moved downstream along the Dnieper River to be rapidly reconstructed at the next stop on the route — the changeovers happened while the empress slept.

Thus, the same faux buildings would be seen over and over again in new contexts by her highness and other ambassadors. Potempkin’s underlings, meanwhile, would dress up and pretend to live in these places along the way. While it can be hard to disentangle facts from fantasies in this particularly peculiar history, one thing is certain: from these stories arose the idea of the “Potemkin Village,” which came to have political and economic as well as architectural meaning.

Potempkin’s story is extreme, but his motivations are relateable — he was driven by that same desire ordinary people have to make their homes a bit tidier than usual when entertaining guests or that inspires business owners to put slightly idealized versions of their wares upfront on display. The difference is arguably one of scale and degree, and his position of power and authority enabled him to take things further. In the realm of international economics, politics, business and military operations, such deceptions can indeed become massive, surreal and in rare cases are persistently maintained, even when people know a place is fake.

The World’s Biggest Facade

Perhaps the most sizable and strange contemporary example is the village of Kijong-dong, located near the Korean Demilitarized Zone. To understand this place, though, one needs to first understand the context in which it was constructed.

The Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) have effectively been at war for over 60 years. The Korean Armistice Agreement brought an end to the active hostilities of the Korean War in 1953, but it was only meant to be a temporary measure. Absent a more permanent settlement, the conflict technically remains open-ended. The resulting KMZ spans 160 miles from coast to coast and is 2.5 miles wide with the Military Demarcation Line running down the center. To this day, the border between remains one of the most militarized in the world as both sides claim the right to govern the whole Korean peninsula. Along the border, both North and South Korea maintain “peace villages,” each of which is peculiar in its own way.

On the south side, residents of Daeseong-dong live tax-free and exempt from military service. The place may seem a bit artificial, but it has real residents living out their real lives. On the north side, the situation appears much stranger — even at a glance, Kijong-dong looks conspicuously luxurious for a rural North Korean town. Interior lights turn on and off at set times while street-sweeping caretakers and other “citizens” are positioned to make it look occupied. “Farmers” show up during the day but depart at night rather than heading into one of the “buildings” where people might be expected to live.

North Korea is well known for guiding visitors through particular routes of its capital city and controlling the experience of travelers to the country, but Kijong-dong takes this kind of coercive deception to the next level, staging an entire town for display complete with a support cast and crew. However real and fake modern accounts of Potempkin’s historical efforts may be, he would presumably at least be impressed by the effort.

Looking much like the real whales this area is known for, a new visitor center will rise from the tip of a Norwegian island 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. “The Whale” by architecture firm Dorte Mandrup aims to be an unobtrusive addition to the setting while also drawing even more visitors to the remote area of Andøya, a prime whale-watching destination.

“The new Arctic attraction, The Whale, tells the story of the big inhabitants of this underwater world, rising as a soft hill on the rocky shore – as if a giant had lifted a thin layer of the crust of the earth and created a cavity underneath,” say the architects.

“A single curved concrete shell makes up the roof of The Whale. This parabolic form effectively transmits the forces to three support points in the corners of the building, creating a large, inner column-free room.”

The “whale tail” effect is only visible from a certain angle, but it’s still pretty cool, and the structure’s low-lying form is meant to help human visitors maintain a minimal impact on the area (though ecotourism remains controversial, as some say it’s having a negative impact and others say it helps raise crucial funds and awareness for affected species.) Other popular activities in Andenes include taking in the northern lights, exploring fjords, hiking, fossil hunting and berry picking.

The design beat out stiff competition from the likes of Snøhetta, Reiulf Ramstad and Bjarke Ingels Group, chosen for its combination of creativity and respect for the natural environment. You can see all of the proposals at The Whale’s website and judge for yourself.

Featuring the architecture firm’s signature undulations and parametric curves, the new Daxing Airport in Beijing by Zaha Hadid Architects will accommodate 72 million travelers per year by 2025. Launching on October 1st to coincide with China’s 70th anniversary, the airport is nicknamed “the starfish” for reasons that become obvious when you see it photographed from above.

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Boasting the world’s largest single-building terminal, Daxing Airport was developed to ease congestion at the existing Beijing Airport. But don’t expect to fly through it anytime soon: it’s basically getting a soft launch, with only China United Airlines flying domestic flights there through October 27. Other Chinese and international airlines will slowly start scheduling flights through Daxing after that, with relocation expected fo finish in 2021.

“Echoing principles within Chinese architecture that organize interconnected spaces around a central courtyard, the terminal’s design guides all passengers seamlessly through the relevant departure, arrival or transfer zones towards the grand courtyard at its center – a multi-layered meeting space at the heart of the terminal,” say the architects.

“Eight flowing forms within the terminal’s vaulted roof reach to the ground to support the structure and bring natural light within, directing all passengers towards the central courtyard. Natural light also enters the terminal via a network of linear skylights that provide an intuitive system of navigation throughout the building, guiding passengers to and from their departure gates.”

“The compact radial configuration of the terminal allows a maximum number of aircraft to be parked directly at the terminal with minimum distances from the center of the building, providing exceptional convenience for passengers and flexibility in operations. 79 gates with airbridges connect directly to the terminal while BDIA’s facilities can quickly process the passengers of six full A380 aircraft simultaneously.”

The new airport’s code is PKX. It gets a portion of its power from solar panels, and its centralized heating with waste heat recovery is supported by a ground-source heat pump system. The airport also features rainwater collection and the natural storage, permeation and purification of up to 2.8 million cubic meters of water in new wetlands, lakes and streams to counter the “heat island” effect on the local microclimate in summer.

A remarkable new building hovers over the surface of the Randselva River in Jevnaker, Norway, connecting two forested riverbanks as part of the Kistefos Museum, Northern Europe’s largest sculpture park. Appropriately called “The Twist,” the new gallery space by architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) achieves a beautiful curving form using nothing but straight lines.

This “art bridge” allows visitors to enjoy large outdoor works spread throughout the park on either side of the river as well as the historic Kistefos Wood Pulp Mill, a reclaimed factory onsite. The 1,400-square-meter building provides space for an information center, museum shop, triple-height gallery space, smaller gallery spaces and an outdoor terrace.

As visitors pass through the curving structure, the rotation of the glass changes the quality of light. The wide, naturally lit gallery on the north side offers panoramic views of the landscape, and the tall, dark gallery on the south end allows for more control with artificial lighting. A glass stairway leads down to the museum’s lower level on the north embankment.

“A simple twist in the building’s volume allows the bridge to lift from the lower, forested riverbank in the south up to the hillside area in the north. As a continuous path in the landscape, both sides of the building serve as the main entrance. from the south entry, visitors cross a 16m aluminum-clad steel bridge to reach the double-height space with a clear view to the north end, similarly linked with a 9m pedestrian bridge.”

“The double-curve geometry of the museum is comprised of straight 40cm wide aluminum panels arranged like a stack of books, shifted every so slightly in a fanning motion. The same principle is used inside with white painted 8cm wide fir slats cladding the floor, wall and ceiling as one uniform backdrop for Kistefos’ short-term Norwegian and international exhibitions. From either direction, visitors experience the twisted gallery as though walking through a camera shutter.”

MAD Architects will ensure that the experience of visiting the new Yiwu Grand Theater in China’s Zhejiang province is unlike anything else in the world, with a highly unusual boat-inspired design. Set on the south bank of the Dongyang River, the structure seems to float on the surface of the water, its sloping glass curtain walls resembling massive translucent silk sails.

A tree-lined pedestrian footbridge offers access from the northern side, while a large plaza dips down to the water on the southern side. Trees dot the facility itself as well, as if nature has overtaken a long-anchored ship. The theater features a passive solar design, with the glass curtain walls acting as both a shading system and a means of optimizing natural light.

This design by MAD Architects bested proposals by Arata Isozaki, Christian de Portzamparc, GMP and others in a contest held by the city as it aims to brand itself as a new cultural hub for the region.

“Positioned with the mountains in the distance as its backdrop, and the water as its stage, MAD’s design responds to its locale, and appears as a boat, floating on the river,” say the architects. “It is defined by a layering of glass sails that are reminiscent of the Chinese junks that once transported goods across the waters, while their subtle curves echo the Jiangnan-style eaves of the ancient vernacular architecture that is typical of the region.”

“The transparency and lightness of the glass express the texture of thin, silky fabric, creating a dynamic rhythm that makes them appear as if they are blowing in the wind. They act as a protective canopy around the building, resonating with the river, elegantly floating above the water’s surface, setting a romantic atmosphere.”

Looking at these renderings, one question that comes to mind immediately is, what happens if the river rises? MAD doesn’t address the issue, but features that deal with the possibility may be built into the design. In any case, it’s a striking new landmark for Yiwu, and somewhat reminiscent of the Sydney Opera House.

The complex will include a 1600-seat grand theater, a 1,200-seat medium theater and an international conference center with a capacity of 2,000. Commissioned by the Administration Committee of Silk Road New District of Yiwu along with the Culture, Broadcasting & Television, Tourism and Sports Bureau of Yiwu, the new theater is set to begin construction in 2020.