Toronto’s downtown core lacks the sprawling wilderness that Canada is known for. But for CIBC SQUARE by Ivanhoé Cambridge and Hines – of which a 49-storey, 1,500,000-sq.-ft. office tower is set to open, the first phase of a three million square foot downtown Toronto campus — the architectural team of WilkinsonEyre and Adamson Associates commissioned painter Steve Driscoll to bring a hint of the Northern Boreal forest into a tower of concrete, steel and glass.

The CIBC SQUARE office complex by Hines and Ivanhoé Cambridge continues to make progress in Downtown Toronto's financial district.

The south tower, which recently began to welcome tenants, stands 49 storeys above the corner of Bay and Lake Shore, while the north tower, for which land is currently being excavated, will stand 50 storeys above Bay Street, just south of Front Street.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce led a syndicate of lenders providing a $780-million (US$642 million) green loan that will finance the second phase of construction of the CIBC SQUARE office complex in Toronto.

CIBC SQUARE, which is one of the first major office developments in downtown Toronto poised to open amid the pandemic, is prepared to safely welcome back tenants once restrictions lift and tenants are ready to return to the office.

To grace the office tower lobbies, the project team commissioned esteemed Toronto-based painter Steve Driscoll to bring Canada's northern boreal forest into this tower of steel and glass in an unprecedented way.

The public-facing art project is part of the recently-opened Bay Street Bridge, and it was created by Montreal-born artist Nicolas Baier.

The bridge's large-scale contemporary art project is called the Mycelium, and its design consists of an LED etched glass wall on one side that is publicly visible through glass windows on the other.

One of the newest additions to the Toronto bridge scene — a pedestrian bridge along Bay Street — just got an electrifying new public art piece.

Connecting the Scotiabank Arena and Union Station Bus Terminal to the new CIBC SQUARE building, the recently opened bridge features a striking, light-up art piece in its walls that can be viewed from those inside the bridge and by those passing down below.

Another month of Toronto city-building, transportation, and real estate talk is now behind us, so we are rounding up the hottest stories, project Database files, and Forum discussions from March, 2021.

The 1.5-million-square-foot second tower at the CIBC SQUARE development in downtown Toronto has broken ground and is scheduled for completion in 2024.