Last week, we returned to the standout L Tower at Yonge and The Esplanade for a trip up to the top of the 58-storey condominium development. In yesterday’s first installment of our tour, we gave you a close up look at the newly revealed mechanical penthouse cladding. The southern, eastern and western sides of the mechanical floors are almost completely windowless, which, coupled with the lack of flat roof space, makes conventional cladding installation from within the building practically impossible. To facilitate the cladding of the mechanical floors’ exterior, a large temporary scaffold has been constructed atop the tower’s peak, which is now being used to raise and lower swing stages containing workers and cladding on the tower’s exterior.

Temporary scaffold atop the L Tower, image by Jack Landau

The acrophobia-inducing rigging sits one storey above the tower’s 675 foot peak on the west side, while standing three storeys above the eastern tip of the tower thanks to the angled roofline. This temporary measure provides the flat surface from which the external swing stages can be operated.

Temporary scaffold seen from street level, image by Forum member drum118

The complicated latticework of steel currently occupies much of the exposed upper floors, anchored to multiple storeys as they narrow along the northern curve. In the images below we get a closer look at the web of scaffolding rising from the L Tower.

Looking east through the temporary scaffold, image by Jack Landau

Scaffold anchored to multiple different floors as the tower narrows, image by Craig White

While the installation of mechanical penthouse cladding has been long awaited, it is still overshadowed by the sloping curtain wall cladding being applied to the tower’s landmark northern façade. The final few floors of curtain wall are currently being installed, and with glazing nearing the tip, we decided to take a closer look at how the signature north façade cladding is being applied.

Metal brackets for cladding installation on the northern façade, image by Jack Landau

The curtain wall seen on the northern façade is installed in a much different way than the window wall cladding used on the southern, eastern and western sides of the building. Window wall panels are mounted on the edge of floor slabs and sealed off, while curtain wall effectively hangs beyond the concrete on metal brackets bolted to the concrete floor slabs, forming a non-structural outer shell of glass and steel.

Close-up of curtain wall mounts, image by Jack Landau

A row of metal brackets with the fully installed curtain wall of the floor below visible through the fence, image by Jack Landau

While the curtain wall brackets are completely hidden once the curtain wall is installed, small metal protrusions are now visible on the upper floors of the curved north façade. Those are to keep sheets of snow from sliding all the way down the façade in wintertime, something anyone below will appreciate!

Snow clips on the uppermost floors of the northern façade, image by Craig White

We will return tomorrow with the third and final installation of last week’s L Tower tour, where we examine the large penthouse units coming together on the 58th floor. Until then, additional information including building facts, renderings and floorplans can be found in our dataBase file, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out the associated Forum threads, or voice your opinion in the comments section provided at the bottom of this page.