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Excitement among development watchers is building for the latest office tower to begin its rise into the Toronto skyline, as construction progresses on Ivanhoé Cambridge and Hines’ CIBC Square just south of Union Station. Designed by UK-based WilkinsonEyre Architects with Toronto's Adamson Associates serving as Architects of Record, the complex's 49-storey, first phase has progressed rapidly since we last provided an update on its construction eight weeks ago.
At that point in early July, the tower's concrete elevator core had recently risen above grade. In the time since, the tower core's height has quadrupled thanks to self-climbing jumpform technology, where forms are raised from a freshly-poured and cured level using hydraulic jacks, allowing the site's three tower cranes to be used for other tasks.
Most recently, a series of upright structural steel beams have been raised and are beginning to form a ring around the concrete elevator core. These steel beams approximately demarcate the perimeter of the tower floor plates which will eventually emerge above the podium levels.
On the east side of the ground floor, seen below, these columns define the edge of the passenger waiting area in the new GO bus terminal, beyond which the buses will park to load. To the right of the image below, a row of cylindrical concrete columns can be seen taking shape which will support the second level of the GO Terminal from its approximate centre. The GO Bus Terminal will be relocating to this space from its current ground level space immediately across the rail corridor to the north of this site. Following its move, construction on the CIBC Square North Tower can begin in that space.
CIBC Square's 49-storey, 1,300,000 ft2 first phase South Tower is on track to open its doors in 2020. The second phases' 54-storey North Tower, expected to open in 2023, will look virtually the same, while being turned 90 degrees, and having parallelogram-shaped floor plates. Its extra five storeys are counted based on a different configuration of the upper storeys behind its qulted-diamond-pattern glass skin. The completed two-tower development will add a combined 2.9 million ft² of new office space to Downtown Toronto.
Additional information and images can be found in our database file for the project, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out the associated Forum threads, or leave a comment in the field provided at the bottom of this page.
