Toronto-Dominion Centre

The Toronto-Dominion Centre is a large cluster of buildings in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is home to the Toronto-Dominion Bank, as well as many other businesses. 21,000 people work in the complex, making it the largest in Canada.

Interiors

The two storey Banking Pavilion has a roof comprised of steel I-sections, each huge beam being supported on only one steel column at each end. However, these beams are arranged in a grid, creating a waffle-grid ceiling and a row of corresponding columns around the periphery. This allows for one vast, column-free space within. The structure was a further development of the Post Office pavilion of the Federal Centre in Chicago, which had less expressed columns and a second level balcony, and a precursor to the Neue Nationalgalerie completed in Berlin in 1968, which had a similar roof supported on only eight large steel columns. Smaller areas inside the Pavilion are cordoned off using counters and cabinets as partitions, all built with the typical rich materials of Mies' palette - marble, woods, and granite.

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The newspaper The Globe and Mail stated about the Banking Pavilion:

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:"The two-storey banking hall in the plaza is among the best spaces Mies ever made. As you are visiting the branch you will find yellow flowers in a fishbowl vase on the service counters just where Mies had put them."

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(from Globe and Mail, November 4, 2002)

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