Toronto Seventy5 Portland | ?m | 11s | Freed | Core Architects

Is painting done on the exterior yet?
It would be br great to see the completed paint job.

How's the rest of the building coming along?
I am curious to see the finished courtyard (and how much light that narrow space actually gets).
 
I'm looking for a place to rent in this building, if any investors are looking for a reliable professional tenant please let me know. Either PM or email my username at gmail.com. Thanks! Tom
 
from today...
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Thanks for the updates Jasonzed.

I was hoping they'd given up on the painting as the fix for the horrible quality of concrete finishing. I walked by here the other day and could not believe how bad the quality is. It honestly looks like something you'd expect to see in a building in some third world country.
 
I must be one of the few who actually likes this. It looks good to me. I've also passed by the building and didn't think the paint job was all that bad.
 
Now they just need to paint a giant Crema Coffee (or whatever beverage that is trendy these days) ad on the side so that 100 years from now people will "rediscover" the logo when they convert this building to a chic factory....

Whenever I see the house beside this building, or the houses across the street from the new 4$ hotel, I think of my childhood introduction to urban sprawl &/or big city living:

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Aesthetically, the former unpainted finish was more 169 John than a throwback to 77 Elm. I'm fond of brave, hardscrabble concrete like that as an expressive form - think Serra's Shift - but I'm also drawn to other local Brutalist treatments ( and there are tons of examples ) where it is textured and nuanced in a variety of different ways. 77 Elm, a late example, uses texture to good advantage on the east and west sides, and beneath the windows - bringing the modular, and scale, into play as a measure of the whole ( as Mies did with his applied I-beams on the TD Centre ). It might have worked here, especially on the south side, but that wasn't what the architects had in mind ... and painting the whole damned place after the fact works against the original aesthetic and I don't think replaces it with anything superior.
 
It looks like painted cardboard!!!
I think the white paint emphasizes the horrible form work. At least the mottled raw concrete hid some of the imperfections.

There's all kinds of wierd patterns in the form work. From coarse seams to ripples, to slipped formwork, to tufting (like a sofa), the builder should've applied a concrete parge coat (or at least smooth stucco) before painting which will smooth out the surface.

I noticed the silver standing seam metal parapet cap which is very unfortunate.
 
Whether or not it is the primer coat, I am certain that this is just the first of many applications to improve the look of the building. Certainly it is looking better than it did.

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The painting appears to have finally covered the whole building as of this week and I have to say that now that it's complete it looks way better and more finished than it did before the paint job.
 
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