Legacy Room, Toronto, Canada, by WilkinsonEyre, Brook McIlroy

London architecture studio WilkinsonEyre has completed the CIBC Square skyscraper in Toronto, Canada, which is surrounded in undulating glass facades.

Created as the headquarters for bank Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the 250-meters-tall skyscraper stands in Toronto’s central business district. Named CIBC Square, the building has a glass facade that covers the distinct volumes that make the building look like it is two conjoined skyscrapers.

A second nearly identical skyscraper, which is set to be completed in 2024, will be built alongside the building to complete the development. A fully landscaped one-acre public park was built four storeys above street level, which will eventually link both buildings.

The building also serves as a transit hub with a bus station in the podium with connections to Union Square, a busy transit station in Toronto.

1.Introduction

WilkinsonEyre was founded in 1983 by Chris Wilkinson, who passed away in 2021. The studio is known for projects like a covered waterside park in Singapore and a series of luxury apartments built inside decommissioned gasholders at Kings Cross.

At the end of the main travertine corridors are counterposed walls made of translucent coloured glass designed to function as shoji screens, dividing the entry corridors from the rooms beyond.

The lobby flooring is dark basalt stone that matches the dark granite used for the outdoor public spaces at the front of the building.

The lobby desks, lift doors, and other architectural details are bronze metalwork.

2.About

About CIBC

CIBC is a leading North American financial institution with 13 million personal banking, business, public sector and institutional clients. Across Personal and Small Business Banking, Commercial Banking and Wealth Management, and Capital Markets businesses, CIBC offers a full range of advice, solutions and services through its leading digital banking network, and locations across Canada, in the United States and around the world.

About the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund

Inspired by Chanie’s story and Gord’s call to build a better Canada, the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund (DWF) aims to build cultural understanding and create a path toward reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

DWF’s work centres around improving the lives of Indigenous people by building awareness, education, and connections between all peoples in Canada. For more information, visit downiewenjack.ca

About Brook McIlroy

Brook McIlroy is a design and planning practice fusing the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, planning and Indigenous place-making to create a holistic contemporary practice that advances the potential of Canada’s lands, peoples and communities.

A unique practice specialty is the Indigenous Design Studio, which is led by Indigenous designers who work with communities, institutions, and municipalities on projects addressing Truth and Reconciliation and the celebration of Indigenous culture.

3.Advantages

A flexible, welcoming corporate space designed with Indigenous elements

Brook McIlroy worked closely with CIBC, The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, Ellis Don and Govan Brown to create a Legacy space in the new CIBC Global Headquarters located in Toronto’s financial district. The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund Legacy Spaces are safe, welcoming places dedicated to providing education and spreading awareness about Indigenous history and the journey of reconciliation. The Legacy Spaces program is an opportunity for corporations, government, organizations and educational institutions to play an important role in their communities.

The Indigenous Design Studio at Brook McIlroy designed the Legacy Room, with its vaulted ceiling, to reference the traditional form of the Midewiwin Lodge as built by the Anishinaabe (Ojibway) as well as the longhouses of the Huron-Wendate and Haudenosaunee longhouse villages. Three round light apertures reference the Niswi-mishkodewinan or Council of Three Fires – the Anishinaabe alliance of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations.

Leading visitors to the space, the adjacent corridor features a ceiling inspired by Guswenta or Two Row Wampum, one of the first treaties. Additionally, the environmental graphics were designed to depict the Toronto Purchase Treaty and as a reminder all peoples are subject to the treaties and have a shared responsibility to uphold their obligations.

The space features furniture and finishes sourced through Indigenous suppliers.

4.Comp any

“This results in a stepped profile and an expression of a ‘crown’ to each building, which provides an interesting and dynamic addition to the skyline of Toronto,” WilkinsonEyre director Dominic Bettison told Dezeen.

Bettison said that the design of the three-million-square-foot CIBC Square was largely a response to the style of the nearby Toronto Dominion Centre, a series of towers designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1969.

“These facades express each floor with a pattern of horizontal ribbon windows and solid, dark metal spandrels which are repeated up the height of the tower,” said Bettison.

“Our facades offer a contrasting architectural expression with a vertical scale and modulation and an architectural language of repeated 10-storey-high ‘three-dimensional’ diamonds.”

The diamonds were designed to catch and modulate light in changing ways throughout the day to contrast the “brooding” towers typical of the area.

Bettison also noted that the shape of the exterior appears to float as a “veil” or “skin” above a more solid interior volume.

“The glass was carefully selected to provide sufficient reflectivity and in doing so captures dynamically the ever-changing sky condition,” he told Dezeen.

In the lobby, the travertine and bronze metalwork directly reference Mies van der Rohe’s Toronto Dominion Centre, according to Bettison.”The stone cladding to the core walls has been designed as a three-dimensional relief, which is an abstraction of the exterior diamond facade system,” he said.

The LEED-certified structure was also one of the first in Toronto to use “use treated groundwater as grey water reuse,” according to CIBC Square’s general manager David Hoffman.

Hoffman also told Dezeen that the building was one of the first WELL-certified office buildings in Toronto.

5.Conclusion

Key design features include:

• An engineered HVAC system to support traditional ceremonies such as smudging;
• Design patterns that represent the lands and waters of our shared territory to remind us of our relationship to the land and each other;
• Graphics on glass walls naming the signatories of the Toronto Purchase that marked the sale of land by the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation to Britain;
  • The signatures take the form of animal pictographs that represent each person as well as their clan, position and background;
• A vaulted ceiling of solid carved oak and wood-veneer ribbing, inspired by the Anishinaabe teaching lodges and the longhouses of Wendat and Haudenosaunee villages;
• An oval table in the middle of the meeting room inspired by the practice of Indigenous sharing circles and designed to encourage meetings and events to follow the same format of participatory discussion.

source : brookmcilroy _ wilkinsoneyre _ dezeen _ mediaroom

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