The successively completed buildings of the 56-storey Toronto Dominion Bank Tower (1967), the single-storey customer service hall of the bank and the 46-storey Royal Trust Tower (1969) together form a coherent ensemble which despite their asymmetric placement relate clearly to one another. The taller of the two towers is connected by a walkway to the single-storey pavilion creating an L-shaped figure that encloses a plaza. The connecting walkway is, however, designed in such a way that both building volumes retain their autonomous character and are perceived as freestanding objects. The two towers stand with their narrow ends facing the customer service hall of the bank.
As with Mies’ other buildings, the vegetation is conceived as part of the overall architectural composition. Together with the landscape architect Alfred Caldwell, Mies placed trees in an asymmetrical pattern of recesses in the paving and integrated grass lawns into the stone plinth. As a result the urban block provides not only a public plaza but also an abstract natural landscape. The design of the outdoor areas is a fundamental part of the architecture, knitting together the plinth and the pavilion that sits on it. The result is a balanced contrast between the sculptural mass and weight of the podium and the slender lightweight impression of the wide-span steel structural frameworks that extend high up into the sky.