This contribution discusses the possibility of a 'distant viewing' of architecture and how the entirety of a city's urban fabric can be questioned algorithmically. As a case study, we will show how all facades of Venice have been automatically extracted from a photogrammetric model and enriched with external temporal, stylistic, as well as cadastral information. This corpus is the starting point of a formalist reading of facades, one in which a "computational eye" on dimensions and patterns can unfold a new look upon the city – provided it is accompanied by the critical reading demanded by this re-materialisation of architecture.