I really feel like this building was for many years of a era that is now considered an eyesore, but now its mid-century style building is like 5 years away from being recognized as a classic worth keeping - and instead they are recladding it into a cheap and dated style with maybe 5 more years before everytyhing of that style will be considered an eye-sore for the next 50 years.
 
I'm curious what the repercussions of applying the new cladding directly over the old cladding will be. Building envelopes are complex creatures - air flow, heat flow, moisture, etc., all work in complicated ways depending on the air pressure in those gaps and spaces, where the vapour and/or air barrier are located, etc. etc... it seems reckless and lazy and cheap to me to just slap new cladding on top of the old precast, but that's just me.
 
Today:

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I walk past this daily. I think if is generally better than I had feared. I do really miss that old brown glass. But for me it’s still about the crown, so we will see.
 
The thing with this whole mess of a project is, if Cadillac had went with the darker cladding like we can see on a narrow strip on the north side of the building, the project would have looked a lot sharper. Instead of that, they chose this off-putting cladding and decided to mix it in with a completely random strip of darker cladding. I haven't even gotten started with the crown, because who knows how badly that's going to be butchered up.
 
The glass currently clashes with the precast but, keep in mind the concrete is still to receive its grey metal siding.
 
I agree and was thinking the same thing. The bottom few floors look, dare I say, better. We will see what the finished product looks like soon. I rather liked the lighting that was proposed.
 
Someone earlier mentioned amateur ignorance and not being aware of the 60's and 70'. With all due respect some of the 70's edifices are fine and some are down right ugly and often replaced an earlier architectural gem. This building in particular I was never fond of and thought it top heavy and was joined to the old Simpson store very awkwardly. Some of the brown smokey glass from that era looks great and I thought the Zurich building on university looks great before the retro fit.
 
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