Toronto-Dominion Centre
The Toronto-Dominion Centre, or TD Centre, is an office complex of six skyscrapers in the Financial District of downtown Toronto owned by Cadillac Fairview. It serves as the global headquarters for its anchor tenant, the Toronto-Dominion Bank, and provides office and retail space for many other businesses. The complex consists of six towers and a pavilion covered in bronze-tinted glass and black-painted steel. Approximately 21,000 people work in the complex, making it the largest commercial office complex in Canada.
The project was the inspiration of Allen Lambert, former president and chairman of the board of the Toronto-Dominion Bank. Sister-in-law Phyllis Lambert recommended Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as design consultant to the architects, John B. Parkin and Associates and Bregman + Hamann, and the Fairview Corporation as the developer. The towers were completed between 1967 and 1991. An additional building was built outside the campus and purchased in 1998. As Mies was given "virtually a free hand to create Toronto-Dominion Centre", the complex, as a whole and in its details, is a classic example of his unique take on the International style and represents the end evolution of Mies's North American period.
History
Background
After the 1955 merger of the Bank of Toronto and the Dominion Bank solidified in 1962, the Toronto-Dominion bank directors decided to commission a new headquarters to demonstrate the bank's emergence as a reputable national institution. Allen Lambert, past-president and chairman of the board of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, secured a cooperative partnership in the late 1950s with the Bronfman-owned developer, Fairview Corporation ; this marked a first for the development process in Canada, in that a bank, rather than creating its head office alone, had aligned itself with real estate interests and the city to influence urban space. The partnership was established as a 50–50 relationship, with the bank having the final say on the design of the complex and Phyllis Lambert—sister-in-law to Allen Lambert and a member of the Bronfman family—was called in as an advisor on the TD Centre competition. Gordon Bunshaft, then chief designer of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, was hired by the consortium. His proposal called for exterior structural supports for the main office tower, which then necessitated piston-like slip joints at the roof level to deal with weather-related expansion and contraction of the structure. Phyllis Lambert objected to this submission, later stating in an interview that it "was a ridiculous proposal on many levels.... Even in a milder climate, it would have been problematic." Bunshaft, due to his refusal to redesign, was relieved of his commission.This left John Parkin, the local architect who would have worked with the American Bunshaft, to design Toronto-Dominion Centre. His firm put forward a model showing a 100-storey, all-concrete tower—to be the largest in the Commonwealth—standing over a plaza with a sunken courtyard containing a circular banking pavilion. It was at this point that Phyllis Lambert insisted that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe be called for an interview. Mies was unimpressed by Parkin's concept and wondered why one would design a building to be entered through its basement. With this, the Parkin proposal was scrapped and Allen Lambert was convinced to bring Mies on board. Though he was technically commissioned as the design consultant to the local architects, the project was essentially Mies's design in its entirety, demonstrating all the key characteristics of the architect's unique style.
The choice of Mies and his design gave the project the added significance of being a symbol of Toronto's emergence as a major city. It also marked Mies's last major work before his death in 1969. This followed the precedent set by the previous incarnation of the Toronto-Dominion Bank: the Bank of Toronto's 1862 office at Wellington and Church Streets had been designed by William Kauffman and its 1913 Beaux-Arts headquarters were conceived by Carrère and Hastings. Both firms were the most renowned and respected architects of their times.
Construction
The development of the TD Centre required Fairview to acquire a full city block of downtown Toronto, except for some frontages on Bay Street and at the corner of King and York Streets. Among notable losses from the subsequent demolition were the Rossin House Hotel, which dated to the 1850s and was once one of the city's preeminent hotels. The Carrère and Hastings Bank of Toronto headquarters, at the southwest corner of King and Bay Streets, was also razed despite protests urging that the Beaux-Arts building be incorporated into the new centre. Fairview officials brushed these aside and said that it "did not fit in". Elements of the old edifice can still be found as relics in Guild Park and Gardens, in Scarborough.The first structure completed was the Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower in 1967. Though the complex remained unfinished, the official opening took place on 16 May of that year to coincide with the Canadian Centennial celebrations, with Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy, presiding, accompanied by her husband, Sir Angus Ogilvy.
At, the tower was the tallest building in Canada when completed. The completion of the banking pavilion and the Royal Trust Tower followed in 1968 and 1969, respectively. The Commercial Union Tower was added in 1974 and was the first on the site not conceived by Mies in his plan. It was followed by the IBM Tower, built south of Wellington Street across from the original campus in 1985. The 23-storey building at 95 Wellington Street was completed in 1987 and contains. Cadillac Fairview acquired it in 1998 and incorporated it into Toronto-Dominion Centre. Finally with little available space left on or near the block, the final building—the Ernst & Young Tower —was constructed in 1992 over the existing 1930s Toronto Stock Exchange.
Late 20th century
From November 27–30, 1967, the 54th floor of the newly finished Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower was the venue of the centennial year Confederation of Tomorrow conference, a summit of provincial premiers convened by Ontario Premier John Robarts. It was an unsuccessful attempt to achieve a provincial agreement for amendments to the constitution of Canada proposed by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.In 1993, Garry Hoy, a 39-year-old lawyer of Holden Day Wilson, plunged 24 floors to his death after repeatedly charging a window while attempting to demonstrate its strength to a group of visiting law students.
21st century
The original three buildings and the plazas of Toronto–Dominion Centre were together recognized as a part of Ontario's built heritage in 2005, when an Ontario Heritage Trust plaque was unveiled by Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, his wife, Sophie, Countess of Wessex, and former lieutenant governor of Ontario Lincoln Alexander. The complex has been designated under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act since 2003. The designation notes "The Toronto-Dominion Centre is an outstanding example of the International Style of architecture." The concrete foundations, the load-bearing black-painted steel frames, the bronze-tinted glass curtain walls with mullions and a grid of exposed and painted steel I-beams, the revolving doors at the bases and, on the towers, the pilotis, are noted architectural features on the exterior of the buildings. Inside, "the interior finishes and custom-built fittings in the Banking Pavilion, in the lobbies of the Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower and the Royal Trust Tower" are recognized heritage attributes.In 2007, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada declared the TD Centre a masterpiece of the twentieth century.
In May 2017, to mark the 50th anniversary of the complex and Canada's 150th birthday, the buildings became the canvas of an art exhibition by Montreal artist Aude Moreau in which the buildings were used as a canvas to spell out “LESS IS MORE OR,” a take on Mies van der Rohe's famous expression. While this type of installation had been done elsewhere, this was the largest undertaking of its kind in the world.
Site
As with the Seagram Building and a number of Mies's subsequent projects, the Toronto-Dominion Centre follows the theme of the darkly coloured, steel and glass edifice set in an open plaza, itself surrounded by a dense and erratic, pre-existing urban fabric. The TD Centre, however, comprises a collection of structures spread across a granite plinth, all regulated in three dimensions and from the largest scale to the smallest, by a mathematically ordered, grid.Three structures were conceived: a low banking pavilion anchoring the site at the corner of King and Bay Streets, the main tower in the centre of the site, and another tower in the northwest corner, each structure offset to the adjacent by one bay of the governing grid, allowing views to 'slide' open or closed as an observer moves across the court. The rectilinear pattern of Saint-Jean granite pavers follows the grid, serving to organize and unify the complex, and the plaza's surface material extends through the glass lobbies of the towers and the banking pavilion, blurring the distinction between interior and exterior space. The remaining voids between the buildings create space for the plaza and lawn.
Phyllis Lambert wrote of the centre and the arrangement of its elements within the site:
More towers were added over the ensuing decades, outside the periphery of the original site—as they were not part of Mies's master plan for the TD Centre—but still positioned close enough, and in such locations, as to visually impact the sense of space within areas of the centre, forming Miesian western and southern walls to the lawn and a tall eastern flank to the plaza.
Pavilion
The banking pavilion is a double-height structure housing the main branch of the bank. It contains fifteen modules within a single interior space, with smaller areas inside the pavilion cordoned off using counters and cabinets, all built with the typical rich materials of Mies's palette—marble, English oak, and granite. The roof of the building is made of deep steel I-sections, each beam supported on only one steel I-section column at each end, all combined to create a waffle-grid ceiling resting on a row of corresponding, equally spaced columns around the periphery. This structure was both a further development on the post office pavilion of the Federal Center in Chicago—which has fewer expressed columns and a second level balcony—and a precursor to the Neue Nationalgalerie completed in Berlin in 1968—which had a similar roof supported on only eight large steel columns. The TD Centre pavilion was described by The Globe and Mail as "among the best spaces Mies ever made".The banking pavilion's living roof was installed as part of Cadillac Fairview's goal of having the entire complex LEED-certified by 2013. It is intended to help protect the building from solar heat gain, reduce storm runoff, and contributes to air quality.