Toronto-Dominion Centre

Toronto-Dominion Centre

Lawrence Technological University

July 23, 2015

Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig

O’Connor, Thomas (photograph)

German

Single Built Works

August, 1969

Ontario (province)

Toronto (inhabited place)

International Style (modern European architecture style)

office buildings

View of glass windows at the Toronto-Dominion Center in Toronto, Ontario designed by Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1967. "The TD towers were a radical departure both in scale and in style. The tallest of the original two soared to 56 floors, dominating the skyline like nothing before or since. Rising from its six-acre site at King and Bay, it was everything the old buildings around it were not. While they featured arched windows and gargoyles, Greek columns and bronze roofs, the design of the TD Centre was all austerity and simplicity ... The towers that Mies designed for Toronto have an elegance that has outlasted shifting architectural trends. The retail-banking pavilion at the corner of the complex is a thing of beauty: a huge, open, light-filled space meant to mark a move away from the glassed-in teller booths and cloistered bankers’ offices of the past to a more welcoming era. The ground-floor lobbies have interior walls of creamy travertine, a stone that contrasts with the severity of the buildings’ exterior. At the base of the towers, the granite plaza is a rare expanse of open space in a crowded downtown,"--Five things the TD Centre can teach us about how to build Toronto, by Marcus Gee from The Globe and Mail, May 01, 2015.

steel (alloy)

glass (material)

jpeg

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LTU-TO-758