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It seems an ironic problem for a school that turns out hundreds of fine artists every year: OCAD University is living in fear of paint.

For most of the winter, yellow caution tape has fluttered, tied to the pillars (OCAD faculty call them “pencils”) that hold up the Sharp Centre for Design, the iconic school-on-stilts designed by British architect Will Alsop, that opened 10 years ago. The yellow tape prevents students from walking underneath the south end of the building; the school fears they may get hit with falling flakes of paint.

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“There is quite a thick layer of special paint on the pillars,” says Christine Crosbie, a spokeswoman for OCAD U. “The ice storm and bad weather started to affect it. It can’t be repaired until we were sure the cold weather wasn’t coming back.”

It isn’t the school’s only maintenance problem. On the four floors OCAD owns in a condo building on the east side of McCaul Street, the sinks in the bathrooms are broken or drip; a men’s room on the third floor has no door on the toilet stall. Rather than fix them, OCAD has put “Out of Service” signs on some sinks, and blocked two bathrooms outside the library with yellow caution tape.