In Toronto, the plinth houses an artificially illuminated shopping concourse and a cinema. This platform in the terrain is articulated architectonically as a “mound” belonging to the ground and differs
markedly in its construction and materials from the steel and glass
buildings that stand on it.
The design for what was to be the tallest building in Canada
was originally going to be undertaken by Gordon Bunshaft, but
on Phyllis Lambert’s recommendation Mies was invited to contribute. He ended up producing designs for the entire complex,
which was then realised in conjunction with the Canadian offices
of John B. Parkin Associates and Bregman + Hamann Architects.1
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.
As in Berlin, the two monumental service ducts in the square
hall are clad with Greek Tinos marble, and visitors familiar with
the Neue Nationalgalerie will have a déjà-vu experience on entering the bank. A further similarity between the buildings is the
large column-free universal space covered by a grid of steel roof
trusses. The advantage of this method, which required the utmost
precision, is the low self-weight and construction depth of the roof
structure; its disadvantage the high assembly costs, which Mies
was nevertheless willing to accept in order to achieve the desired
impression of lightness. He declared, “we have steel. I think that
this is a fine material. By fine, I mean it is very strong. It is very elegant. You can do a lot with it. The whole character of the building
is very light. That is why I like it when I have to build a building in
a steel construction. What I like best is when I can use stone on
the ground.”2