About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 26. Chapters: 500 Place D'Armes, Bankers Hall, Bank of Canada Building, Bank of Canada Building (Toronto), Bank of Commerce (Halifax), Bank of Commerce Building, Windsor, Bank of Montreal Building (Halifax), BDC Building, Commerce Court, Complexe Desjardins, First Canadian Centre, First Canadian Place, HSBC Canada Building, Maison Astral, Place Ville Marie, Royal Bank Plaza, Royal Centre (Vancouver), Scotia Centre (Calgary), Scotia Place, Scotia Plaza, Scotia Tower, TD Canada Trust Tower, Calgary, TD Tower (Edmonton), TD Tower (Halifax), TD Tower (Vancouver), Thomas D'Arcy McGee Building, Toronto-Dominion Centre, Tour CIBC, Tour de la Banque Nationale, Tour Scotia, Two Bloor West, Union Bank Building. Excerpt: The Toronto-Dominion Centre, or Centre, is a cluster of buildings in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, consisting of six towers and a pavilion covered in bronze-tinted glass and black painted steel. It serves as the global headquarters of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, as well as providing office and retail space for many other businesses. Some 21,000 people work in the complex, making it the largest in Canada. The project was the inspiration of Allen Lambert, former President and Chairman of the Board of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, with Phyllis Lambert, recommending 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, with one additional building built outside the campus and purchased in 1998. Part of the complex, described by Philip Johnson as "the largest Mies in the world," was designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 2003, and received an Ontario Heritage Trust plaque in 2005. Three of the Toronto-Dominion Centre's towers: (left to right) the Ernst & Young Tower, Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower, and Royal Trust Tower Toronto-Dominion Centre as seen from King and Bay Streets, with the banking pavilion in the centre foregroundAs Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 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 the evolution of Mies' North American period, which began with his 1957 Seagram Building in New York City. As with the Seagram Building, and a number of Mies's subsequent projects, Toronto-Dominion Centre follows the theme of the darkly coloured, rigidly ordered, steel and glass edifice set in an open plaza, itself surrounded by a dense and erratic, pre-existing urban fabric. The Centre, however, comprises a collection of structures spread across a granite plin
