Personal opinion: I would have loved if the bricks used in the podium were the same colour as the original Westing House brick colour.
It would have created personality, extended the historic building and created architectural continuity for the whole structure
^^^ Brick rarely can be matched, especially 90+ years later. Attempting to do so would have looked strange, not continuous. Also, this project is of its time. There'd be no design integrity in trying to "extend" the historic building. I think the architects handled the Westinghouse facades appropriately, although I would've preferred the building be preserved in its entirety.
China-based international developer Greenland Group expanded into Canada five years ago, and today its projects are a major component of Toronto’s rapidly transforming East Bayfront area. “East Bayfront is our long-term focus,” Greenland Group deputy director of construction and contract
The prefab brick looks absolutely terrible and boxy. Other than that, hopefully there is decent retail or restaurants on ground level. Hopefully by the end of 2020 the building is functional to boost some more life into the King street strip between BJ and John.
Are you sure about that? I didn't see any bricklayers laying brick. What I did see are slabs of pre-laid brick being added to the facade. If you look at the building facade it's quite easy to see the lines of seperation between the slabs of pre-laid brick added to the facade slab by slab... and it's ugly
They are hand laid bricks, but the bricks themselves are really really big compared to the size of the bricks on the historic facade (almost block sized). It's a small detail, but I do wish they had used the same size stock for the additions.