The phrase "austere facade" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a building or structure that has a stern, simple, or unadorned appearance.
Example: "The old library had an austere facade, with its plain stone walls and minimal decoration, reflecting the seriousness of its purpose."
Alternatives: "stern exterior" or "simple front".
Saint-Étienne has an austere facade bare of ornament.
Behind an austere facade, the Church of Sao Roque (Largo Trindade Coelho; 3460361), admission 17 cents, possesses eight richly decorated chapels and a museum of sacred art.
The AIA Guide to New York City, by Norval White and Elliot Willensky, praised the renovated building's "great corbeled brick openings in an austere facade".
Behind the austere facade of the spacious Hefei intermediate people's court, the courtroom is too cramped for foreign media to watch as Gu, 53, and family employee Zhang Xiaojun, 33, stand trial, officials insist.
Chalets from €260 a week, castel-chalets.com In the centre of Vigncastrisi, a tiny village 2km inland from the Salento coast, the delights of Palazzo Guglielmo are well hidden from the passer-by, behind an austere facade with a huge double wooden doors.
Still bearing a few battle scars, the castle's austere facade reflects both the 16th-century renovations undertaken in the reign of Emperor Charles V -- the first Spanish Hapsburg monarch, who visited from time to time -- and its former function as fortress, barracks and prison.
Seen from the north plaza, the addition's main entrance gently defers to the old building, the crystalline form suggesting a ghostlike echo of the austere stone facade.
The facility is officially classed a "county residential center", but with its austere brown brick facade and chain-metal perimeter fence, it better resembles a prison.
The austere arcuated (arched) facade, owing something to Leon Battista Alberti's Malatesta Temple at Rimini, Italy, is adorned with the carved names of more than 800 of the most important authors whose books are housed within.
There is the Church of St. Andrew, one of the few buildings in Krakow to survive the Tartar invasion of 1241, that conceals within its austere white limestone facade a later, richly ornate Baroque interior.
The interior is as austere as the unadorned facade.
