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 Some of these quirky examples may sound outdated or limited to extreme regimes, but similar trickery can be found around the world.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.

In bustling cities packed with other people, it can be nice to stand out at times, but it can also be a relief to fade quietly into the background for a bit. Creative wallflowers looking for a bit of both draw on all sorts of inspiration to create urban camouflage that ranges from virtually invisible to fashionably outstanding.

Take Menja Stevenson, a German artist transfixed by public transit textiles. Often overlooked or outright disliked by others, she found that he patterns applied to train and bus seats are quite intensively and cleverly designed.

Transit fabrics have a job to do, standing up to wear and tear while mitigating the visible impact of dirt, stains, spilled drinks and other challenging conditions. So Stevenson contacted transportation agencies to secure fabric samples, then started making outfits based on these generally unloved textiles.

Ironically, though, this kind of camouflage actually makes the wearer stand out, whether they are sitting in a pattern-matching seat (a juxtaposition which can look rather surreal) or simply striding down the street (clad in what are relatively unusual patterns).

Photographer Joseph Ford combined forces with knitter Nina Dodd to take a similar idea a step further, crafting apparel to match a variety of urban backdrops related to transportation and otherwise. For their project, they borrowed colors and patterns from tiles, bricks, even a graffiti mural.

The resulting camouflage is still very context-specific, but taken to other locations the the results actually start to blend in — seen on the street, it would generally be hard to guess that these subjects were wearing designs lifted from public places.

Of course, visual and material patterns aren’t the only repeating elements in cities that one could use as a basis for concealment. Physical objects like soda machines and waste bins also proliferate, adding an opportunity for immersive camouflage that can works in three dimensions.

Designer Aya Tsukioka took her disguises to the next level when she created a set of suits and backpacks aimed at mimicking the size, form and details of everyday urban objects. Since the specifics of such designs vary from city to city, they may not match their setting anywhere else, but these outfits are right at home in Tokyo.

If machine suits represent the maximalist end of the camouflage spectrum, emulating complex patterns and larger objects, these black-and-white wearable architectures designed by Snarkitecture are definitely more on the minimalist side.

Copied from rectangular, hexagonal and marbled surfaces around New York City, one would be hard-pressed to guess that architectural surfaces inspired these shirts, hoodies and hats.

Not to be outdone, other New Yorkers have taken urban camouflage beyond textiles and into the realm of body paint, enabling levels of detail and precise blending that are as context-dependent as they are mesmerizing.

Artist Trina Merry takes personalized trompe l’oeil to the third dimension, first in the Big Apple and then beyond. For her photos, she places figures in front of architectural icons and everyday cityscapes, painting people to match bricks, concrete, steel, graffiti, trees, wavy water or whatever is needed to complete the illusion.

No story mentioning body-painted urban camouflage artists would be complete without Liu Bolin, whose work borders on uncanny at times, looking more like the product of Photoshop than photography. His pictures may be fun and entertaining, but they are not without serious and controversial dimensions. In this past, he has had run-ins with the Chinese government — at one point, police even shut down his studio for including state buildings, uniforms and other official design elements.

“Living in the red hot China,” says Bolin, “I feel that I am not in control of my own life. However, I have an indescribable burning desire inside of me. Art is a weapon that helps us untangle the chaos in our lives. I hope that my artworks can calm people down during this period of constant change, but at the same time, inspire people to re-evaluate our environment and reconsider the problems arising in our society.”

Context is of course the key to camouflage, which is part of what makes it such a powerful tool for artists seeking to speak to certain times, places and conditions — like the mass-produced repetition of stuff for sale in big retail stores, illustrated above. From body paint based on decorative wallpapers to ghillie suits designed to blend into supermarket sales bins, there can be more to an urban disguise than meets the eye.

Waterproof and windproof seem like small bonus features next to the dazzling look of this jacket design, the shell of which is covered in microscopic spheres that mimic the adaptive camouflage of squids.

Developed by Vollebak, this high-tech creation used lasers to embed these tiny balls into resin along the triple-layered surface of the garment, creating a slick metallic oil-like effect by day and then a dazzling spectrum of reflective wonder at night.

“The Black Squid Jacket focuses on replicating the elements of squid skin that make it hyper-visible,” explains the designer. Whereas “a squid uses microscopic plate-like structures on the surface of its skin to change color, our jacket uses disruptively-structured microscopic glass spheres.’

“When light hits the jacket, it travels through the curved surface of these black glass spheres and strikes the back of them, before being reflected back at the original light source and scattered away from it simultaneously, so that the fabric looks like it’s emitting light.”

What appears, from a distance, to be a slice of land levitating above the hills of Santorini, Greece is actually an incredible modern home set on a lower level that acts like a mirrored plinth. Living greenery emerges from the roof, and the upper level bears the striations found in cross-sections of excavated earth. What must observers think of it as they approach, squinting at it in disbelief?

This unusual residence is just the latest modern wonder created by the firm Kapsimalis Architects. Located within a vineyard facing the Mediterranean Sea with views of the island’s capital city of Fira, the surreal structure pays tribute to its location with its highly unusual cave-inspired design.

Within that mirrored ground floor are the living and dining rooms, kitchen, master bedroom and bathroom, while the earthen level hosts an attic, office and terraces overlooking the spectacular setting. It’s almost like the architects magically inverted the earth and sky, since the open-plan lower level enjoys panoramic views of the outdoors through its one-way mirrored facade but feels like it’s underground thanks to the thick, heavy volume above it.

“The rough volcanic landscape, the intense alternations of the scenery, the diversity of the materials, the former architecture and the changeable weather conditions have a huge effect in our designing process. We consider that each architectural solution is related to the surrounding and is formed by it in a harmonious or a conflicting or in a totally seperate way. The differnt features and challenges of the place is the spark that leads each time to diverse architectural forms.”

“We are interested in how buildings could become integral parts of the landscape. Apart from the forms and how could be developed on each place, equally compelling is how the use of each building contribute to the environment itself. We seek for the values and the customs , the old aesthetics and the pre-existing memories of each place in order to show them up in a modern twist. Wishes and hidden desires of the future users are mixed with project’s background in search of a new perception of the space.”

Other works by the firm include hotels camouflaged within sandy hillsides, monumental concrete homes, sensitive adaptations of Greek ruins and other structures that play upon the region’s natural textures and shapes as well as the island nation’s vernacular architecture.

via Designboom

The former Bata shoe factory in “Batawa” – a company town located in southern Ontario – forged fine footwear for footloose Canucks from 1939 to the year 2000.

Kickoff

The Bata Shoe Company was founded in 1894 in Zlin, Austria-Hungary, by Tomas Bata and his two siblings. By 1932 the company had grown to become “shoemaker to the world”, boasting 16,560 employees, 1,645 stores, and 25 other non-footwear enterprises. That same year, an aircraft crash took the life of Tomas Bata, leaving the company’s fate and fortunes to his brother Jan Antonin and his son, Thomas John Bata.

Czech Your Privilege

The new generation of ownership continued to apply Tomas Bata’s proven business plans by expanding the firm’s footprint both in Europe and around the world. One of the company’s most innovative practices was the establishment of local “Bata-villes”. These vertically-integrated company towns had their own schools, grocery stores, and subsidized employee housing, all owned and operated by The Bata Shoe Company.

”A Place to Grow”

In 1939, with the clouds of war massing on the horizon, the firm built Batawa – a company-owned planned village situated on the northern shore of Lake Ontario in what is now the city of Quinte West, Canada. Bata chose the location purely for economic reasons: it was close to navigable waterways, a railway, a highway, and an airport.

Sole Purpose

As was the case with other Batavilles, Batawa’s heart and “sole” was the shoe production factory. The state of the art (for 1939) five-story-tall facility dominated the peaceful southeastern Ontario countryside while enabling the firm to dominate the Canadian market for affordable footwear.

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Footloose Canadas Abandoned Bata Shoe Factory