One Canada Square

Torchwood Tower was a skyscraper located in Canary Wharf, London. To members of the general public, the building itself was known as "One Canada Square" (PROSE: Millennial Rites), "Canary Wharf Tower" (PROSE: Millennial Rites, Head Games, The Time Travellers) or just Canary Wharf for short. (TV: Army of Ghosts) Circa 2005, it served as the headquarters of the Torchwood Institute. In order to gain access, one had to say "Mr Sands" to a receptionist. (AUDIO: New Girl)

History
The tower was built to reach the height of the radar black spot later determined by the Institute to constitute an anomaly in space and time, in reality a breach into the Void. The Torchwood Institute set out to investigate and, if possible, exploit the phenomenon. The true nature of the tower and the existence of Torchwood itself remained unknown to the public. Torchwood One later based itself out of the tower. (TV: Army of Ghosts)

Ashley Chapel, the designer of the micromonolithic circuit, operated his company, ACL, out of the tower in late 1999. Due to Chapel's use of the Millennium Codex, the tower briefly entered or transformed into the Great Kingdom where One Canada Square turned into the Tower of Abraxas. (PROSE: Millennial Rites) A newspaper later recovered by Ace reported the tower's change in shape. (PROSE: Head Games)

In the early morning of 1 January 2005, the newly regenerated Eleventh Doctor, flew west above the Torchwood Tower's pinnacle whilst clinging by his fingers from his TARDIS' door sill, before climbing back aboard and being thrown nearly nine years back in time. (TV: The Eleventh Hour)

The Tenth Doctor visited the Tower in 2007 with Rose Tyler and was promptly arrested as an enemy of the empire pursuant to the Torchwood Institute's royal charter.

Other sections of the Tower acted as testing grounds for technology derived from alien artefacts. Torchwood was involved in experimental "ghost shifts" which opened up the Void and allowed the Cybermen of another world to enter this universe. A golden levitating sphere, actually a Void Ship, appeared at the spot. (TV: Army of Ghosts) The Void Ship contained the Cult of Skaro, a group of Daleks who had escaped into the Void to survive the Last Great Time War, who clashed with the Cybermen in the conflict known as the Battle of Canary Wharf. The Doctor discovered a way to force anything touched by the Void to return there. This included millions of Cybermen from the other world as well as every Dalek that had come through the Void. This, as well as the battle itself, caused great damage to the building. (TV: Doomsday) Ianto Jones and his girlfriend, Lisa Hallett, both of whom worked for Torchwood One, escaped from the building before its destruction. Lisa, at this stage, had already been partially cyber-converted. (TV: Cyberwoman)

Alternate timelines
In an alternative 2006 in which London was in ruins, the British Army based itself out of Canary Wharf Tower. (PROSE: The Time Travellers)

In an alternate timeline in which John Hart took control of the British Empire and the Torchwood Institute, Yvonne Hartman called to inform him of the discovery of the Sphere at Torchwood One. Despite the reservations of Rajesh Singh, the King ordered that the Sphere be opened, resulting in Torchwood One and the home counties being massacred. (AUDIO: The Death of Captain Jack)

Parallel universes
As with their N-Space counterparts, the Torchwood of Pete's World was based at Torchwood Tower in Canary Wharf. However, their facility was found and seized by the People's Republic of Great Britain. However, the Cybermen infiltrated Torchwood, and used the facility to transport their five million strong army to invade the Earth of N-Space. The process of transporting so many Cybermen took them three years, at which point they arrived in N-Space in 2007, while the Preachers, led by Pete Tyler followed them from Pete's World in 2010. Through a dimensional transporter, the Tenth Doctor was introduced to the parallel Torchwood by Jake Simmonds, where he warned the Preachers of the damage the technology caused to the wall between worlds. As a result of the battle which saw the Cybermen defeated as the Doctor trapped their army in the Void, Rose and Jackie Tyler of N-Space were left behind in the Torchwood of Pete's World as the breach between worlds was closed. (TV: Doomsday)

Behind the scenes
Helicopter footage of Canary Wharf in Army of Ghosts, during the reveal of the location of the Tower, was taken from the British TV show The Apprentice.

Torre Torchwood