TOareaFan
Superstar
It's not really one building tho. It's more like 5 or 6 buildings being built right up beside each other and at the same time. The office, hotel, and retail components are all completely separate so it makes sense that it would read as different from the street. That and the needs of a hotel's cladding are distinct from that of an office (the hotel needs smaller, operable windows). Not to mention that the building would be overwhelmingly bland if they tried to cover such a large surface area in one uniform pattern
I think that is the problem they are trying to deal with. It is one building...but they need to create the feel/illusion of separate buildings. There is not a great history of tenants wanting to pay full market rent to be in a 200,000 s.f. office component of a mall or a hotel. So the challenge was to create the illusion of a separate office building within a greater development.
Time will tell if they are successful (I don't think they have completed any office leases yet and a big portion of the retail is spoken for from two tenants so it is hard to determine how much "market acceptance" there is to this sort of mixed use project).