alright... 15 % then :p lol... but i think you're right... about 5 floors left plus the roof element... sweeet..
 
getting quite tall.....pic by Jasonzed at SSC......

20100516058.jpg
 
unfortunately also still looking rather ugly and cheap... hope this all comes together at the top.

Judging by the rendering, the top part would be the most worrysome if you are using cheap looking materials... so I wouldn't hold out too much hope for it. Who knows, though? Maybe the overall shape will save it somewhat.
 
the more this building is being clad, the better the overall look of the building is with the setbacks.... I really like the last shot posted above ^^ the setbacks look awesome and the building itself looks really freakin tall!
 
but replicating some 1930's stone cladding would be best! I wonder if in this age of cheap and quick that we'll ever see such cladding in this city again? the rendering for this looked so promising and I got sucked in by it...
 
but replicating some 1930's stone cladding would be best! I wonder if in this age of cheap and quick that we'll ever see such cladding in this city again? the rendering for this looked so promising and I got sucked in by it...

For very very high-end buildings maybe. There is a very significant cost difference between pre-cast and stone and a large building with a similar design to Uptown utilizes a lot of panels. The cost to the purchasers of each condo unit is pretty uneconomical - even One St. Thomas which opened at a few hundred dollars a square foot higher then Uptown only used stone on the lower three levels of the tower.

Although as the city core becomes less and less affordable and more very high-end buildings are constructed, the additional costs of luxury materials can more easily be absorbed into construction budgets. We are starting to see this with respect to window-wall vs curtainwall glass treatments on residential buildings with a few buildings at the highest end of the cost scale starting to utilize curtainwall technology... perhaps this shift in the use of premium high-cost windows at the upper end of the market is an indicator of future trends.
 
This is one building that I would really like to see aged. Maybe replicating some 1930s-era grime would make it look more classy and less cheap.

the problem with the "super white" cladding on uptown is that when its aged, it'll look bad... but once its REALLY aged, it'll look classy :D... i can imagine that even a bit of dirt will make this building look bad! I can just imagine the streaks left by dirty water running down the building!
 
To all those enthusing about an aged Uptown, take a walk down to the Cosmopolitan condo at Yonge and Maitland to see for yourself how precast ages. It ain't pretty. There's nothing romantic about precast concrete, new or old.
 
It definitely looks a bit like Legoland but the setbacks are nice. I worry about the top, though.
 
I recognize that precast construction saves a lot of money, and is here to stay, but I hope that future fabricators improve the look and durability of the finish. I am optimistic that this building will look nice in the context of the glass towers that predominate our sky.
 
To all those enthusing about an aged Uptown, take a walk down to the Cosmopolitan condo at Yonge and Maitland to see for yourself how precast ages. It ain't pretty. There's nothing romantic about precast concrete, new or old.

There are many newer buildings than the Cosmo that suffer the same fate, such as that slab at 1121 Bay and many others. Often the markings seem to emanate from the windows and streak down from there.
 

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