It has been roughly 6 months since we last checked in on the construction of 65 King East, an 18-storey office tower developed by Carttera Private Equities just west of Church Street in Downtown Toronto. Under construction since September 2018, the IBI Group and WZMH Architects-designed tower has recently reached grade, with the first forms now reaching up towards the sky.

Framing boards around a rebar column, image by Forum contributor AlbertC

In the left foreground above, rebar rods protrude from above a form, erected to create a column irising from the floor slab below. With braces in place to hold the form in place, it's likely that the concrete has been poured into the form already, and would now be curing. The rebar extending above the form will eventually be tied to rebar rods that will rise through the next level, extending the process and the strength of the column upward. Before the next column extension though, the second floor slab will be formed around the lower part of the protruding rebar rods.

Elevator core and rebar columns, image by Forum contributor AlbertC

Further south of King Street, the elevator core is being formed. Its concrete walls are shown in the image above standing about 3 metres high, while boards assembled above it are part of a form that will extend the core another few metres to complete its double-height ground floor section. It's the boards which will be used to form the interior of the core that we can see above, while behind and above them a grid of orange-painted steel I-beams have been assembled to brace them. Next, the boards that will be used to form the outer edge of the core will be assembled and braced.

65 King East with Google signage, image courtesy of Carttera

In the meantime, earlier this month Carttera announced that Google would be leasing all of the office space in the 400,000 ft² building upon completion. The company will be tripling their Canadian workforce in the process, expanding from 1,500 to 5,000 as they also open new offices in Waterloo and Montreal over the next few years. Despite a new rendering showing Google's name atop 65 King East, no renaming of the building was announced.

You can learn more from our Database file for the project, linked below. If you'd like to, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.

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