Hello, Dominic, how are you? 

Hi, David. I'm great, thanks, how are you? 

I'm very good. I'm interested in this project that you've been working on for some time now and which has just completed in terms of its second phase; the CIBC Square project in Toronto, your first venture into North America, I think. Could you just give us a very quick highlight summary of the project, and specifically with reference to the Skypark, which looks fascinating… 

Well, yes, we have been working on it for quite a long time, as you say: over 10 years since we won the international competition for the project with Hines and Ivanhoe Cambridge - two clients. It's basically a mega project in the downtown of Toronto, revolving around two 250-metre office towers, delivering about three and a half million square feet, but it's also a TOD, transit-oriented development, so the towers sit either side of the live rail corridor into Toronto Union Station, which is Canada's biggest railway station. So, we've had to carefully integrate this large project into the infrastructure of Toronto.  

Part of the concept involves bridging the rail corridor and connecting the two towers together with a one-acre Skypark, which creates a POPS – a privately owned public space – in the centre of Toronto, which is quite something, I think. We've also had to work with integrating other transit into the development, so we've got the new city's bus terminal in the podium of the South Tower. We've had to upgrade what's called a Teamway, which is a transit space where passengers wait in the warmth before they go up onto the platforms above, and we've basically designed the project to be ready for a future light rail system that will pass next to the project. The project is very carefully integrated into, as I said, the transit system. The crash walls of the rail corridor, in fact, form one of the cores to the North Tower. And then we have a series of bridges that connect the project into Union Station and into the wider neighbourhoods. These are path bridges. This is the path system, which is this well-known Canadian pedestrian system, typically below ground, again, where people can stay out of the severe Toronto winter and stay in the warmth, and it allows buildings to be connected together in a sort of retail environment. In our case, the path is above ground. As I say, it's a series of bridges that connect into the development and give it real connectivity. 

The park, though, is a really mega piece of infrastructure. It spans nearly 100 metres over the rail corridor, and also it helps to connect the towers together. It also, in an urban sense, is connecting the north of the central business district, south of the corridor, so helping to really help in connectivity and helping to mitigate some of the obstruction that is the rail corridor. So, healing the scar, really, which is this rail corridor cutting through the downtown of Toronto. The park itself allows for various functions, so it's been designed to be very flexible. It has an ice rink in the winter, it is landscape with hard and soft landscaping, so great places to sit in the summer, as well. There's lots of interesting seating design, and we've deliberately designed all of the amenity for the towers to sit at the park level, so we've got two very large food halls and a high-end restaurant that are located at the park level, and they help to give life and energy to the edge of the park, and to really make it a vibrant space in the heart of Toronto. I should say the development is going to be the headquarters of CIBC Bank. It is their international headquarters, so hence why it's called CIBC Square. We provide about 1.6 million square feet to the bank. 

Were they in the original, earlier tower, or are they going in the later, the newest tower? Or both? 

They're in both towers. The South Tower has, in the podium, a lot of amenity for the bank; things like auditoriums, and there's a good health club, conference centre, etc. In the North Tower they have office space, but they also have trading floors, and the North Tower itself is really interesting, because I mentioned that the crash wall to the rail corridor actually forms part of the core of the tower itself, so really carefully integrated design, engineering, architecture was called for. We couldn't put columns down into the rail corridor itself, so all of the columns, the perimeter columns for the tower, fold back into the core, a series of sort of propped columns, if you like, that interface with the core. So, we get a really striking base to the tower with no columns coming to ground; so, lobbies with no columns and a cable wall to support the glass to the lobby itself. It's going to be a really stunning space, 70 metres long, 25 metres high, cable wall, no columns, so it's really creating an extraordinary moment in that part of Toronto, 

I can't even begin to think how complex this is in terms of dealing with live transport links. How did you do it? How did you even build this thing? I mean, you built it during, the night, when the train lines were closed? Or how did it work? 

Exactly that. A lot of construction happened out of hours when some of the tracks were closed. Not all of them were closed. Some of the lines run 24 hours, so work had to stop and start to really work with the rhythm of the trains. But I think key to the success was having Metrolinx, the transit authority, as a partner to the project, so working with them in terms of logistics and design, you know, you can imagine putting columns down into platforms needs to be very carefully designed, shall we say. There are columns from the Skypark that come down, it's not spanning 100 metres, where we can and do land columns, but clearly, restrictions on where columns can go - to do with sightlines for train drivers and safety - was paramount. So yes, again, carefully coordinating work with Metrolinx and their operational requirements, and yes, as you say, working out of hours. But I think Metro is key, key to it being a partner in the arrangement, delivering them a bus terminal, a brand new city bus terminal. Previously it was at grade and formed part of the North Tower site. To allow us to build the North Tower, we had to move the bus terminal. We could only do that once we built them a new bus terminal in the South Tower. So, once they decanted into the South Tower, then we could start work on the North Tower. So, yes, it's been quite a long process, as we talked about at the beginning, over 10 years now. 

Am I right in thinking that the Skypark sort of stitches back two districts that the rail artery had separated for a long, long time? Is that part of its function? 

Absolutely. We're trying to stitch back together the lake, stitch that back to the centre of Toronto, the downtown area. We're trying to create more connectivity both over the rail corridor and below it, and you're really trying to connect those two parts of Toronto together. I mean, the urban realm strategy plan that we developed was really key to the project in my mind, the creation of three public spaces, three plazas, and one Skypark, so two new plaza spaces on Bay Street and one on Young Street, pushing the towers back to create those new plaza spaces, and then connecting those plaza spaces then up onto the Skypark. We were creating a sort of triangle of connectivity, connecting Young Street to Bay Street, and connecting in three dimensions up over the rail corridor and below the rail corridor. So yes, the idea of creating new high-quality public space to anchor the development into the local neighbourhood was a key thing that we were trying to do. 

Were there transferable lessons from your work at 21 Moorfields in London, where you built over the Elizabeth Line, in terms of geology, perhaps, and the rail operations, to a completely different system? 

I think there was definitely transferable experience and knowledge; the kind of close coordination of engineering and architecture, and rail specialisms. I think it's something that we're really good at, having, as you know, such a strong pedigree in transit itself, doing High Speed Two, Old Oak Common, Dublin Metro, having worked on the on Jubilee Line and Elizabeth Lines. But we have this sort of pedigree of understanding transport and transit, and then integrating buildings over the top of that, be it an OSD, over site development, or a TOD, transit-orientated development. It is something that we're increasingly well known for, and I think that experience of coordinating where structure can land relative to the infrastructure and how that structure then might inform the architecture. I've talked a little bit about how the structure created really interesting architectural spaces at CIBC, but the structure at 21 Moorfields is very much on display. The idea that you read this bridging structure over the rail corridor and then the expression of the structure is something that the practice has been interested in, really since its inception. The sort of elegant integration of architecture and engineering, and the two working very closely together, and kind of celebrating that union of the two; actually not trying to minimise it. I think there's a lot of power and honesty in that approach. 

And back in the UK, how would you characterise the opportunities for that kind of thing currently in London and beyond? I suppose that's a shorthand way of asking what the market conditions are like for this kind of development. 

Well, it's certainly appropriate for certain sites. I think the sites have to have real value – high value – because it does have a cost associated, particularly if you're doing an OSD, over site development, so mindful of the complexity of the of the ground below you, and where you can and can't put foundations down does obviously have costs associated with it. So with high value sites in central London, it makes a lot of sense to allow for that extra density that building over transit nodes can create, and similarly for Toronto, the idea of building three and a half million square feet next to and over the top of the Union Station just makes a lot of sense in terms of densification and ease of commuting for the end user. It's not right for every site, and we certainly looked at schemes where clients had in their head that they wanted to deck over rail infrastructure, but it needs to be the right solution for that site, and sometimes, you know, it doesn't stack up in terms of values. But here in London and other mega cities, we think, there's lots of opportunities as infrastructure is upgraded and as there's ever more pressure on density, increasing density and increasing height to look at these sites that in the past perhaps weren't commercially viable. I think now there's the skills and the understanding, and perhaps the need to do it, shall we say. We see definitely it's happening more and more. 

Well, congratulations on this scheme. Were you over there for the official opening? And if so, how did that feel? 

CIBC hasn't officially opened yet. We're still finishing the exterior finishes, and the Skypark itself is still being finished off. But we're hoping for an official opening later this year. And it will be a great day. (laughs) Twelve years of quite hard work! 

Who's lined up to open it? The Prime Minister, perhaps? 

I don't know. The Mayor of Toronto broke the ground, and I was there with my shovel, (laughs) helping many other people that were key to getting to that point, open the project if you like, into the construction. But yes, it will be a great day. 

So, very last question, what's next on the agenda for you guys? 

Well, we're busy in all our offices globally. I think this year is certainly building on last year, where a lot of things were perhaps holding, and people waiting to see what the market's doing. 

Yes. 

I think this year things are moving forward cautiously, but we're certainly busy looking at big potential schemes in London. We're working on a commercial development in Hong Kong, we're looking at interesting projects in Singapore and the Far East, and we're busy in the Middle East working on masterplanning and further transit work in KSA. So, we're seeing things, and these bigger projects now starting to move forward again. And Australia, we're busy; we're currently working on two quite big residential schemes down in Sydney, and masterplans in Singapore and China, and KSA. 

So more of a focus internationally, would you say, than at home? 

No, I think as a business we like to take a quite balanced approach to our work. Definitely, London's our headquarters, and this is where most of our people are. But we have developed very successful offices in Hong Kong, looking after the Far East, Sydney as well. We've had an office in Sydney for a few years, and that's starting to grow now, and I mentioned the Middle East, we're due to open an office in Riyadh in the near future, and we have an office in Paris as well. So, you know we work across multiple sectors, across multiple regions, and we see that as a really good way to balance out the workload for the firm and deal with certain regions being quieter than others or busier than others. What we really look for is interesting projects, so working internationally gives us the opportunity to access some really, really fantastic international projects in a bigger scale, perhaps different typologies, and it's very exciting to work internationally – I've done that for 20 years – and it's very stimulating to work in other cultures and to see how other people view things. It's quite interesting. 

Brilliant. Thank you very much for your time, Dominic. And congratulations on this project, particularly and all the other schemes you're involved in at the moment. 

Thanks, David. Nice to talk to you. 

And you!