Can anyone tell what's wrong with this picture? That's right, it's raining buckets in Toronto on a day that the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) picked for its semi-annual tour of cities around the world.

Toronto seems a little out of sorts with all the rain, image by etihW giarC

While most Torontonians were holed up one way or another against the rain during yesterday's evening rush, another group gathered under the walkways at Nathan Phillips Square to start a tour of Downtown Toronto's public realm. Coinciding with "twilight" walks led by the CTBUH in many cities around the world on the same day, where the focus was to be on the use of public spaces at night, the 6 PM Toronto walk, held in conjunction with the Ontario Professional Planners Institute, ended up focusing more on how Downtown Toronto is prepared for rain.

A protected view of the new Peace Garden at Toronto City Hall, image by Craig White

The walk started mere metres from where it was meant to, under the protection of Nathan Phillips Square's overhead walkways instead of right at the new location of the Peace Garden. Not one of the original elements of Nathan Phillips Square, the Peace Garden, which memorializes the atomic combing of Hiroshima, was inaugurated in 1984 during Art Eggleton's turn as Toronto's Mayor. Since moved to the western edge of the square, the garden is now in a quieter setting with Osgoode Hall as its backdrop.

From there, the tour moved into the PATH system at the south end of the Square, the world's largest "underground city," with passageways connecting most of the major buildings in Toronto's core. Mostly lined with shops and restaurants, the group passed through the first section of Toronto's modern PATH, where the Sheraton Centre connected with the Richmond Adelaide Centre (RAC) under Richmond Street. After surfacing to see the latest addition to RAC—the 40-storey EY Tower now under construction—the group retuned to the PATH system, navigating through to the centre hall at First Canadian Place.

James Parakh talks up wayfinding inside the PATH system at First Canadian Place, image by Craig White

With stops narrated by James Parakh, head of Urban Design for Toronto East York in the City's planning department, and on the executive of the worldwide CTBUH, the tour group learned about a wayfinding study being undertaken by the Financial District BIA, looking to report next year on possible improvements to the system. Despite attempts to make the PATH navigable to the casual user (repeat users learn it soon enough), the occasional visitor to the system often finds it confusing. The PATH, which is privately owned by the many landowners whose buildings is passes through, is often in space that was not initially designed to accommodate it. Grade changes and bends in the hallways present some challenges to getting from point A to point B, which a new wayfinding system will hope to make more easily followed.

A view of the reconstructed Concourse Building facade at the EY Tower, image by Craig White

Umbrellas went up again for an outdoor walk from First Canadian Place to the Bay Adelaide Centre, initially passing by the south side of the EY Tower. Looking up, the group got a look at the reconstituted south and east facades of the Concourse Building, an Art Deco skyscraper which is being reborn—skin deep at least—at the base of the new tower. Ornaments on the Concourse's exterior have never been brighter nor more colourful in anyone's lifetime: lights are now being positioned below the building's crown to emphasize that element at nighttime. 

Getting up close to one of Micah Lexier's 'Two Circles' in the Bay Adelaide Centre, image by Craig White

Once into the Bay Adelaide Centre, the group paused in the lobby of the first phase, the West Tower, where James Turrell's light installation called Straight Flush was nearly imperceptibly morphing from colour to colour. Owing to their size, the lobbies of Toronto's tall buildings have lent themselves to monumental artworks, pieces that are commissioned as part of the City's 'Per Cent for Public Art' programme. The East Tower, now soft-opened but not yet declared complete, boasts two giant dots in its lobby. One white, one black. By artist Micah Lexier, Two Circles looks dead simple from a distance, but when you're up close you see that the dots and the wall around them are actually made up of hundreds of thousands of individually hand-inlaid tiles. There's a lesson in there to look more deeply, and we look forward to hearing Lexier's take on the work when it is officially unveiled in the coming weeks.

East of the East Tower is the latest addition to Toronto's PATH system, and that is the Deloitte lobby in the building's podium. Extending the PATH nearly to Yonge Street here, Deloitte's space brings daylight deep into their new building. UrbanToronto will have more on this new building in the days to come.

The Deloitte atrium in the latest addition to the PATH network, image by Craig White

From the Bay Adelaide Centre, the group made its way north through the basement of The Bay and into the Eaton Centre's soaring galleria, surfacing to see the Toronto Public Labyrinth in Trinity Square, a park on the west side of the mall. Not unknown but still a mystery to many (the Eaton Centre does have doors to the outside, but is not designed to encourage people to wander beyond its confines), the labyrinth is meant as a place for reflection and quiet amidst Toronto's bustle. Designed as a long, continuous and winding walking path, the labyrinth also boasts a braille version of itself on a plaque at its entrance, ready to guide the blind through a similar contemplative experience with their fingers.

The Toronto Public Labyrinth at Trinity Square, image by Craig White

With the rain over, the walk continued around Holy Trinity Church and through a mid-block pedestrian connection to Dundas Street, then to bustling Yonge-Dundas Square—a public space created through expropriation of a few private buildings and now surrounded by animated LED-lit signs and billboards—before continuing to Ryerson's recently competed Student Learning Centre. The institutional building, Ryerson University's first presence directly on Yonge Street, offers cutting-edge architecture to Yonge Street while maintaining a retail frontage along the sidewalk.

The tour gets a little sensory overload at Yonge-Dundas Square, image by Craig White

The tour ended with a chance for the group consider what they'd seen and ask questions about anything new to them, while enjoying a drink in a bar overlooking Yonge-Dundas Square. It was a similar story across the world yesterday, and you can find out where by searching #CTBUHwalks on Twitter.