Middlesex County Courthouse Redevelopment | 40 Thorndike St | East Cambridge

North Street said:
The cladding seems to be taking forever.
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Agree, but as someone who's been watching this whole thing pretty closely all along, progress has never in fact stalled, and it's the corners that have been holding everything up. All of the non-corner pieces have been fully modular and just craned up into place. Whereas anywhere there's a right angle in the facade, those areas of facade have been fully built by hand in-place. The aluminum window framing and restraint systems have been assembled piece-by-piece in-situ, and it's ostensibly quite laborious. They went with a "frameless" glass-glass edge design at the corners which perhaps drove this approach. Not sure. If you are instead referring to the terra cotta over-cladding going on top of the facade modules, that is also all being done by hand and also going quite slowly (the north side is fairly far along and they've barely touched the south side).
 
Today (1/15):
Given all the historic brick around it, I can see why they chose this exterior color, despite the terra cotta cladding being a tired choice in this area:

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...and here's the bespoke frameless corner glazing I was referring to in my post above:
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Steady as she goes
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Terra Cotta installation - mast climber action
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Breaking out /demo of original first floor? Is the new first floor a two story space?
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Load out demolished slab
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Corner windows ongoing at all corners. No corner mullion should make the building appear less bulky; at least that's the effect I saw in the renderings.
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Corner window
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urbanmansprawler said:
New cladding aside, this building looks better shorter. The proportions make more sense to my eye.
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Cambridge is really lucking out recently when it comes to removing their worst eyesores. The MIT grad dorm demolition, the demolition of the old Volpe, and the modification of this building from public embarrassment to something at least somewhat palatable.
 
A couple of different perspectives illustrating the effect of the new mech penthouse (5/20):

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^Btw, as shown in the first photo, it does look like this will span all the way across the width. They just started adding structure to the north/west side as of a couple days ago and it hasn't filled out like the south/east side yet.
 
Hmm thats interesting. The up close renders omit the full length mech penthouse
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But looking back at the long distance renders if you zoom in its there
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stick n move said:
Hmm thats interesting. The up close renders omit the full length mech penthouse

But looking back at the long distance renders if you zoom in its there
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If you zoom wayyy in and look closely, it is indeed in the first render you posted (see below). The sun shade appendage definitely seems designed to obscure this from street level. Plus, they conveniently chose a viewing angle that minimizes its visibility. In all legitimacy, though, you will barely see this from most nearby street level locations. But from a distance, this mechanical penthouse will be fairly prominent.

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EDIT: as I am contemplating this even more closely, though, it seems they might have altered the shape of this thing at some point, adding height to the "wings" and/or adjusting the setbacks. Very hard to tell from the limited views available.
 
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