Toronto’s CIBC Square gives new meaning to the phrase “transit-oriented development.” Not only is the office complex located directly across from Union Station — the city’s central transit hub that ferries in commuters from near and far — but it also passes directly over a rail corridor and incorporates a ground-floor bus terminal. The fact that the project’s two matching towers are also some of the best-looking office buildings to grace the city’s financial district in recent memory is a big bonus. And it’s not just employees of CIBC (or one of the complex’s other tenants, which also include and ) who will benefit from the design, either. Spanning the rail tracks that pass between ’s two buildings, an elevated urban park forms key connective tissue while also introducing a one-acre privately owned public space — one with four-season appeal, set to welcome a skating rink in winter.
Back when CIBC Square developers Ivanhoé Cambridge and Hines first launched the architectural competition for the project, they had assembled three plots of land slightly south of the city’s traditional central business district: 141 Bay Street, 81 Bay Street, plus the air rights above the train tracks that ran between them. The first address was home to an active bus station, while the second housed a car park. The thinking was that, by constructing two buildings in two phases, bus service could continue uninterrupted — the first tower would introduce a new terminal that, once complete, would allow for the demolition of its predecessor, clearing the way for a second tower. Then, to create a unified business campus, a landscaped roof deck would connect the pair by traversing the intermediate railroads.
It was a complicated, ambitious vision that London architecture firm was uniquely qualified to realize. Along with commercial development, the studio also has a rich portfolio of infrastructure work, including mass transit hubs (see: the Elizabeth Line in London) as well as bridge design (such as Toronto’s own , which connects the shopping mall to the former Hudson’s Bay department store.) “It was the potential to bring all our different expertise together and create a really city-changing development,” says WilkinsonEyre principal Dominic Bettison, whose firm worked alongside Adamson Associates as the project’s Architect of Record.
When Bettison first visited Toronto back in 2012, he recognized that the city’s Financial District had a type — namely, tall, glassy boxes. “The TD Centre by Mies van der Rohe set a very high benchmark for a rectangular floor plate extruded upwards, with ribbon window and spandrel repeated. I saw that over and over again, so I wanted to do something different,” he says. “We had this idea of articulating the floor plate so each building would read as two conjoined towers instead of one. There’s a high point and a low point, and that establishes this dynamic that plays out in the skyline. I didn’t want to do a flat cut top, either — I wanted an interesting crown.”
The façade is another break from Toronto convention. “Again, it was a reaction to all the flat skins that I saw in the city,” says Bettison. “Rather than just floor, floor, floor, we introduced these 10-storey diamonds that have more three dimensionality to give some vertical articulation. If you shift a piece of glass a very small amount, it can have a very profound impact on reflections and how you view the building. It’s constantly changing, depending on the time of day and what the weather’s doing.” That said, Bettison was also mindful of a building that looked too dazzling come sunset. “We’re surrounded by infrastructure — be it rail or road, and any kind of significant glare would be a problem. We worked with RWDI, our climate engineering consultant, to do reflectivity models. In the end, the buildings disperse light rather than creating kind of targeted laser beams.”
Inside the south tower, both the office lobby and GO bus terminal span two storeys. “We were keen not to have this sunken dark bus terminal below grade — and actually, because the site has the Gardiner Expressway to the South, it would have been quite hard to put offices on the lower floors, because you want those floor plates to have views of the lake and the city,” he says. “It ended up working quite well to fill that lower zone with a bus terminal. It’s still quite light-filled — it feels more like a small airport than a bus terminal. And then the office lobby next to it becomes this very dramatic 25-metre high space, which allowed us to introduce an upper ‘sky lobby’ mezzanine. There were a lot of constraints, but they resulted in these creative responses.”
Where many of WilkinsonEyre’s design decisions revolved around introducing fresh architectural thinking to Toronto’s Financial District, CIBC Square’s interior material palette pays thoughtful homage to one of its neighbours. “Mies’s TD Centre towers use travertine in the lobby. Ours are arriving 50 years on, and we wanted them to have a similar feeling of permanence. With that in mind, the cores are clad in travertine, but there’s more three-dimensionality in our case, referencing the façade,” notes Bettison. Between each of the elevator bays, backlit glass panels illuminate digitally printed artworks by that depict Canada’s northern boreal forest.
Speaking of nature, with the second phase of the project now complete, CIBC Square’s “skypark” is now ready to welcome both office workers and area residents alike (albeit with planting and finishing touches still underway). “It’s for the benefit of the tenants but also the whole city — a real public asset,” Bettison says. “It heals the kind of scar that was the rail corridor. We were trying to extend the financial core southwards, but also the porosity of the urban realm and carry it southwards.”
Sure enough, stairways up to the park allow for it to be used as north-south passage, which otherwise requires ducking under an overpass. But for anyone not looking to get some real exercise in, four flights is a lot to climb just to cross a relatively short distance — especially since the outdoor stairs on the south side feel more like emergency exit infrastructure than the path to an enticing urban oasis.
Things get better towards the end of the climb, when the staircases widen to accommodate a sloped bed of plants. Wider staircases with more greenery throughout the whole ascent would have gone a long way towards making this access route feel like a true extension of the park — which would have, in turn, made the park feel more like an actual part of the public realm. As it stands now, it is a bit of a secret garden. During my morning visit, most pedestrians were still opting to cross Bay Street through the ground-level tunnel rather than via this park overpass. (The northern end of the park’s entry/exit stairs — and elevator — are both enclosed within the tower itself, so they also don’t lend themselves to easy discovery.)
That said, for those looking to linger rather than just cut through, the park makes for a very worthwhile lunch spot, especially given its great view of downtown. Landscaping by includes a range of sinuous wooden benches, plus a small hill (with integrated bleacher seating) that will double as storage space for the equipment required to maintain an ice rink planned for the winter season. A 20-metre-tall silvery tree sculpture, “New Amalgam” by Roxy Paine, adds an artistic anchor.
Fully leased, CIBC Square’s prime location and dignified design have both helped employers trying to navigate return-to-work tensions. “We know coming out of COVID that there’s resistance to the type of commute that requires getting off one train to get on another. Here you get off your train and you’re in your office right away. And then the amenities — a great gym, the food court, the sky lobby, but also, especially, the outdoor skypark — all set a new standard for high-rise office development in Toronto,” says Betttison. Even more impressive, the project makes a case for how development can strategically weave its way into the messy urban realm to benefit trains, buses and pedestrians alike.
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