Sister-in-law Phyllis Lambert recommended Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as design consultant to the architects, John B. Parkin and Associates and Bregman + Hamann,[5] and the Fairview Corporation as the developer.

[6] Allen Lambert, past-president and chairman of the board of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, secured a cooperative partnership in the late 1950s with the Bronfman-owned developer, Fairview Corporation (now Cadillac Fairview);[10] this marked a first for the development process in Canada, in that a bank, rather than creating its head office alone, had aligned itself with real estate interests and the city to influence urban space.

[11] The partnership was established as a 50–50 relationship, with the bank having the final say on the design of the complex and Phyllis Lambert—sister-in-law to Allen Lambert and a member of the Bronfman family—was called in as an advisor on the TD Centre competition.

[13] It was at this point that Phyllis Lambert insisted that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (whom she knew from having been the director of planning on his Seagram Building) be called for an interview.

The Carrère and Hastings Bank of Toronto headquarters, at the southwest corner of King and Bay Streets, was also razed despite protests urging that the Beaux-Arts building be incorporated into the new centre.

From November 27–30, 1967, the 54th floor of the newly finished Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower was the venue of the centennial year Confederation of Tomorrow conference, a summit of provincial premiers (except for W.A.C.

[14][15][16][17] In 1993, Garry Hoy, a 39-year-old lawyer of Holden Day Wilson, plunged 24 floors to his death after repeatedly charging a window while attempting to demonstrate its strength to a group of visiting law students.

[21][22][23] As with the Seagram Building and a number of Mies's subsequent projects, the Toronto-Dominion Centre follows the theme of the darkly coloured, steel and glass edifice set in an open plaza, itself surrounded by a dense and erratic, pre-existing urban fabric.

The TD Centre, however, comprises a collection of structures spread across a granite plinth, all regulated in three dimensions and from the largest scale to the smallest, by a mathematically ordered, 1.5 m2 (16 sq ft) grid.

The rectilinear pattern of Saint-Jean granite pavers follows the grid, serving to organize and unify the complex, and the plaza's surface material extends through the glass lobbies of the towers and the banking pavilion, blurring the distinction between interior and exterior space.

[25]More towers were added over the ensuing decades, outside the periphery of the original site—as they were not part of Mies's master plan for the TD Centre—but still positioned close enough, and in such locations, as to visually impact the sense of space within areas of the centre, forming Miesian western and southern walls to the lawn and a tall eastern flank to the plaza.

It contains fifteen 22.9 m2 (246 sq ft) modules within a single interior space,[24] with smaller areas inside the pavilion cordoned off using counters and cabinets, all built with the typical rich materials of Mies's palette—marble, English oak, and granite.

This promontory allowed uninterrupted views of the development of the downtown core that the TD Centre had itself helped to spark, as well as Lake Ontario to the south.

To maintain the clean and ordered aesthetic of the environment, Mies stipulated, with the backing of Phyllis and Alan Lambert, that the storefronts consist only of the glass panels and black aluminium that he specified.

Even signage graphics were restricted to only white backlit letters within a black aluminium panel and only in the specific font that Mies had designed for the TD Centre.

Renovations to the mall, beginning in the late 1990s, caused some controversy within the architectural community as building management, under pressure from retail tenants seeking greater visibility, relaxed the strict design guidelines and allowed more individual signage.

It is open to the public, free, through a partnership between TD Bank, the world's largest collector of Inuit art, and Cadillac Fairview, the property owner in whose lobby space the gallery is hosted.

[46][47] The bank's association with Inuit art can be traced to the Northwest Territories, where branch manager Allen Lambert oversaw its Yellowknife operation from 1946 to 1947.

The group worked with the city for several years to bring the concept to fruition and, in 1994, the Design Exchange was officially opened by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

In 2017, DX launched a 10-day festival called Expo for Design, Innovation & Technology (EDIT), in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme.

Sans Copperplate Gothic was Mies's signature font, as he believed it reflected the calmness and order of the architecture, and he decreed that it be used universally throughout the TD Centre.

To this day, the font is used not just on exterior signs and wayfinding, but also for such communications as artwork captions, fire hose cases and designated smoking areas.

[45] Originally, the branding system extended to the stores in the underground shopping mall, such that all of the storefronts displayed their names in an identical font in white against black.

However, in the late 1990s, under pressure from retail tenants seeking greater visibility, building management relaxed its requirements and allowed stores to customize their signage to their individual brands.

The planter boxes maintain the 1.5m² grid pattern of the pavilion's ceiling below, allowing the roof to also give new life to Mies's original vision.

[57][53][54] The TD Bank Tower is used for exterior shots of Jabot Cosmetics' headquarters on the CBS daytime soap opera, The Young and the Restless.