It's mostly a stylistic choice they do rather than a cost saving measure, though it's likely done for that reason as well. Look at the shorter "tower" on this project: it looks quite similar. It has that grey box thing going on too. They love using white and grey precast panels and making blank walls with tiny little windows in them. Odd, but I guess one of the 3 main guys who works there thinks this looks great. It doesn't.
You can see the same sort of design in other Vive projects they've collaborated on. Have a look at Woodside Terraces 3 and you can see the exact same design choices being used. Or 332 Charles East. A somewhat similar design was done at 169 Borden North and in fact it appears they must have had some leftover light tan precast panels when they finished The Scott because they used the same ones here...next to white and grey panels? Okay, not sure why they'd mix a light tan brown next to white and grey but I only have an MFA focused on design so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to aesthetics haha. The SYLK Tower (the image below) also shares the same sort of weird grey box thing for the podium as this project has, along with having an ugly amount of blank, wasted wall space.
![[Image: rnehdkW.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/rnehdkW.jpeg)
Also the things I linked highlight the other common design choice they have used a few times: having very bright colours as accents on an otherwise uncolourful building. This Lower Kitchener building has a bunch of balconies coloured yellow on the underside. Market Flats utilized a bunch of very bright lime green in its design. Woodside Terraces also uses a similar lime green to accent parts of that project. There's nothing wrong with using colours like this, but there doesn't seem to be much thought into the yellow balconies in this particular case.
The tl;dr is that the people designing these projects are just untalented.
You can see the same sort of design in other Vive projects they've collaborated on. Have a look at Woodside Terraces 3 and you can see the exact same design choices being used. Or 332 Charles East. A somewhat similar design was done at 169 Borden North and in fact it appears they must have had some leftover light tan precast panels when they finished The Scott because they used the same ones here...next to white and grey panels? Okay, not sure why they'd mix a light tan brown next to white and grey but I only have an MFA focused on design so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to aesthetics haha. The SYLK Tower (the image below) also shares the same sort of weird grey box thing for the podium as this project has, along with having an ugly amount of blank, wasted wall space.
Also the things I linked highlight the other common design choice they have used a few times: having very bright colours as accents on an otherwise uncolourful building. This Lower Kitchener building has a bunch of balconies coloured yellow on the underside. Market Flats utilized a bunch of very bright lime green in its design. Woodside Terraces also uses a similar lime green to accent parts of that project. There's nothing wrong with using colours like this, but there doesn't seem to be much thought into the yellow balconies in this particular case.
The tl;dr is that the people designing these projects are just untalented.