Quaderns 272 sets out to analyse different cosmetic techniques by means of a critical approach organized on three levels, corresponding to three scales of the project. First, it looks at the current state of the face of the European city, constructed, reconstructed and transformed. Second, it debates the definition of the architectural object, analysing surface and depht, and, consequently, the idea of artifice from an external view of architecture as well as from a visión of the architecture of the public interior. Finally, like a digital zoom, cosmetic techniques are analysed by means of the study of the architectural fragment while simultaneously attendig to the identity of the whole. Architecture is defined by artífice, often in layers, thicker or thinner, revealing the cosmetic nature of the construction and the possibilities of a language taken to the extreme, and definig the new on the basis of the syntactic domain of the old.