Cathedrals of Commerce
By Grant Humes
When it comes to design, especially architectural design, office buildings aren’t usually the first things that come to mind. You’d be surprised, however, to discover that Toronto’s financial district is home to an impressive collection of modern and post-modern corporate towers, designed by some of most celebrated architects and architecture firms of the 20th century. From Mies van der Rohe’s TD Centre to Brookfield Place, here are a few of our favourites from the city’s financial core.
TD Centre
Architect: Mies van der Rohe
Opening: 1968
Space: 6 towers, 4.3 million sq. ft. 
Since the 1960’s, tall commercial buildings have transformed the skyline of Toronto’s financial district. The Toronto-Dominion Centre was the first and is probably the most prominent, large-scale example to date. Mies van der Rohe, the architect of the inceptive building, referred to his style as “skin and bones architecture,” meaning simple and uncluttered, yet powerful and enduring. The TD Centre is exemplary of this technique: from top to bottom, the building’s facade is unrelentingly uniform in appearance, down to the size of each window and use of black cladding. Other prominent officer towers and buildings by the Rohe feature a similar homogeneity, including the Seagram Building in New York City.
The original design for the TD Centre provided for two prominent tower and the Banking Pavilion at the corner of King and Bay Street. Over time, the complex expanded to six buildings, including the most recent at 95 Wellington Street West, which was completed in 1995. Rohe was also heavily involved in expanding Toronto’s underground pedestrian walkway, known as PATH. His contribution laid the groundwork for increased connectivity of the walkway—as of 2015, nearly all the buildings in the Financial District are connected underground.
Today, more than 20,000 people work in the TD Centre, and each building has been certified as LEED Gold and Platinum.
Royal Bank Plaza
Architect: WZMH Architects
Opening: 1976
Space: 2 towers, 1 million sq. ft. 
The TD Centre’s simplicity is made even more apparent by the intricate flamboyancy of its neighbour, the Royal Blank Plaza. Located across the way at 200 Bay Street, the Plaza features a glossy, triangular facade made with real 24-karat gold—2,500 ounces spread across 14,000 windows. This is not a display of ostentation, however. The reflective properties of gold makes it an excellent material for insulating buildings.
Toronto-based WZMH Architects, the firm that designed and built the Royal Bank Plaza, prides itself on its ability to create efficient spaces. Some of their other Toronto projects include Scotia Plaza, Richmond-Adelaide Centre and Bay-Adelaide Centre. They were also involved in the recent re-positioning of the Royal Blank Plaza, which involved re-designing spaces to better accommodate for the busyness of the King and Bay Street intersection. Tens of thousands of people pass through the Royal Bank Plaza and its PATH connection each day in their commute to and from work.
Brookfield Place and Allen Lambert Galleria
Architect: Santiago Calatrava (Galleria)
Bregman + Hamann,
Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill (Towers)
Opening: 1992
Space: 2 towers, 2.6 million sq. ft. 
Brookfield Place is a truly iconic piece of architecture, recognized around the world for its Allen Lambert Galleria. While the two office towers that jut out from the property serve a practical function of housing 13,000 workers, it’s the Galleria and Sam Pollock Square—winners of a 1987 public design competition—that have brought Brookfield Place considerable admiration.
Described as an “extraordinary white steel cathedral of commerce,” the Allen Lambert Galleria is an early success of Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish neo-futurist architect and sculptor known for designing the Turning Torso, Scandinavia’s tallest building. With a structural engineering background, Calatrava aims to bridge engineering and architecture, pushing the limits of the former to showcase the natural world. In the case of the Galleria, Calatrava’s stated goal was to maximize the natural light inside Brookfield Place’s public space.
Another important feature of Brookfield Place is its interplay of old and new. The facades of 11 heritage buildings from Yonge Street and Wellington Street were incorporated into the space. This ambitious restoration project has led to Brookefield Place being Toronto’s oldest intact streetscape.
Follow the Toronto Financial District BIA on Twitter and Instagram at @MyTOFD.
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