Project Name: CIBC SQUARE

Location: Toronto, Canada

Design Team: WilkinsonEyre

Developer: Le Caisse and Hines

Anchor Tenant: CIBC

Floor Area: 330,000 m²

Completion: 2026

Image Copyright: Doublespace

Design Features: British practice WilkinsonEyre has completed the second phase of CIBC SQUARE, a 330,000-square-metre mixed-use development that bridges one of Toronto's busiest rail corridors with an elevated, one-acre sky park.

Developed for Le Caisse and Hines with CIBC as anchor tenant, and delivered alongside architect of record Adamson Associates, the project comprises twin 250-metre towers positioned on either side of the Union Station rail corridor and connected at height by the new sky park.

The first tower, 81 Bay Street, rises 54 storeys and contains trading floors, conference facilities, retail and a food hall, alongside a new bus terminal for regional transit agency Metrolinx. Its completion in 2021 marked the first phase of WilkinsonEyre's masterplan for the wider site, which spans three linked plots covering around eight acres directly above one of Canada's busiest transport corridors.

The newly completed north tower, 141 Bay Street, finishes the campus and is linked to its southern counterpart by the sky park, developed with landscape architects Public Work. Raised above the rail lines, the park introduces gardens, walking paths and gathering spaces intended for year-round public use once it opens later this year.

Both towers share a faceted glazed envelope that folds into a repeating diamond pattern every ten storeys, a treatment intended to add depth and changing reflections to the skyline while maximising daylight inside. At ground level, three new public plazas and an urban laneway extend Toronto's PATH network and connect directly into Union Station, the subway and light rail lines.

Inside, each tower's lobby rises 25 metres to meet upper sky lobbies that open onto the park; the rear wall of each lobby is clad in vein-cut travertine carved into a triangulated relief, with a recessed, backlit glass artwork by Toronto-based painter Steve Driscoll depicting the province's boreal forest.

The completed campus has achieved LEED and WELL Platinum certification, with the design prioritising daylight, air quality and occupant wellness throughout.

Design Team: Founded in 1983 by Chris Wilkinson and Jim Eyre, WilkinsonEyre is a British architecture practice with studios in London, Hong Kong and Sydney, working across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and North America. The firm describes its work as a fusion of architecture, engineering and culture, balancing an embrace of new technology with sensitivity to context and environment.

WilkinsonEyre remains the only practice to have won consecutive RIBA Stirling Prizes, Britain's most prestigious architecture award, taking the prize in 2001 for the Magna Science Adventure Centre and again in 2002 for the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, the world's first tilting bridge. Its broader portfolio spans Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, the Crown Sydney hotel, and the restoration of London's Battersea Power Station into a mixed-use neighbourhood, alongside corporate campuses for clients including Dyson, Deutsche Bank, Munich Re, Apple and Meta.

The practice positions sustainability as central to its design process, framing its approach around the high-tech movement's principle of “doing more with less” to balance environmental, social and economic performance. WilkinsonEyre takes a participatory approach to architecture, working closely with clients and user groups from early-stage briefing through to construction, supported by tools ranging from point-cloud surveys and parametric modelling to physical modelling and sketching.