THE SECTION
Scroll, or tap the drawing. Each move drafts the next layer on — construction lines first, then finished weight — from the baggage hall below grade up to the arches.
Light reaches: departures, arrivals, baggage
Airport Architects Canada — Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with Adamson Associates and Moshe Safdie and Associates. Yolles Partnership with Arup on the roof. Opened 2004.
WHERE IT GOES
Azimuthal, YYZ at the centre: direction true, distance true, so a great circle out of Toronto draws as a straight line. Six routes only. Tap one.
Azimuthal equidistant, centred on YYZ. Rings at 3,000 km. Drag the globe to turn it.
| Route | City | km | Block |
|---|---|---|---|
| YXU | London, Ontario | 142 | 50 min |
| LGA | New York LaGuardia | 573 | — |
| LHR | London Heathrow | 5,707 | 7 h 00–7 h 25 |
| ICN | Seoul Incheon | 10,618 | to 15 h 25 |
| DEL | Delhi | 11,639 | to 17 h 05 in |
| MNL | Manila | 13,213 | about 16 h 25 |
Shortest scheduled hop and longest, from the same doors. Block times as published; where none is published, none is shown.
Runways to relative length, on 046°T/226°T and 137°T/317°T. Magnetic variation about 10° W. Lit: —
THE DAY
Twenty-four hours across the page, arrivals and departures as two traces. Drag the handle. It opens at your real Toronto time, and it drives the light in ONE.
No per-hour counts are published. Proportional shape only, anchored on about 1,300 flights daily and an average of 46 movements a night — 3.5% between 00:30 and 06:29 under Transport Canada's Night Flight Restriction Program. Preferential runways midnight to 06:30.
Air Canada · Toronto–London departures, 18:05 through 23:50 — shown against the scrubbed hour
18:05
AC
LONDON LHR
—
23:50
AC
LONDON LHR
—
MATERIAL AND LIGHT
Steel arches, glass, precast concrete, terrazzo. More than thirty skylights are cut into the ceiling, so the hall is lit from above rather than from its walls — daylight arrives as shafts with edges, moving across the terrazzo through the day and shortening through the year. Where the south-facing glass drops past the slab, some of it keeps going, all the way down to the baggage hall.
At 43.7° north the roof works for its living. Snow sits on a long span; freeze and thaw pick at every joint from November to April. The arches are pinned at both ends so the structure can move rather than crack, and the glass is set to shed rather than to hold.
The same building is 142 km from London Ontario and 13,213 km from Manila.
HOLD SHORT
Roof
43 ARCHES
Two-hinged, 1,400 mm deep, on a radial grid of 8 to 11 m.
Span
66 METRES, PIN TO PIN
Rising 18 m to the crown.
Terminal
346,000 m²
58 gates along the crescent and its piers.
Passengers, 2025
47.3 MILLION
Through one building, in one year.
Reach
13,213 km TO MANILA
And 142 km to London Ontario — from the same building, the same morning.
ON THE GROUND
Six stops, kerb to gate. Drag the marker, or tap a stop.
We are outside, still in the weather, under the canopy at the kerb.
Stop 1 of 6 · GRADE — KERB · Bag WITH YOU
The same position, lit in ONE's section. Solid pin, you; dashed pin, your bag.