My friend David Wex recently opened up a new bar called Lisbon Hotel, and this evening I went to check it out with him. It's not in Lisbon. And it's not a hotel. But it is deliberately designed to feel like a hotel lobby bar, and it is a great place for drinks and snacks. I recommend both of the dishes pictured above -- especially the cucumber and dill one.

It's also housed in the River City community, which his firm Urban Capital developed. And I think that's something. Developers are often criticized when they put in boring (yet profitable) uses in the ground floors of their buildings. And this is not that (though hopefully it's still profitable). This is him and his partners wanting to do something cool and help create a "place."

Who said new ideas need old buildings? Rhetorical question. It was Jane Jacobs who said this.

For more on Lisbon Hotel, check out this profile in Toronto Life.

My good friends over at Urban Capital recently released a short film about the making of their River City project here in Toronto. (If you can't see the embedded video above, click here.)

For those of you who aren't familiar, River City is a 4-phase development on the east side of downtown that was really the first project in what was known as the West Don Lands area. Urban Capital secured the right to develop the then government-owned lands in 2008 through a public tender process that was run by Waterfront Toronto.

It's a tricky and unobvious kind of site in that it's surrounded by infrastructure and it came with a whole host of development challenges, including flood risk. But the team figured it out and River City has gone on to win a number of awards including the Ontario Association of Architect's Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Design Excellence.

River City is an important project for Toronto in that it dared to be different. It's like no other project in the city, and I'm not just saying this because they're my friends. I'm saying it because I want our city to be a global leader in architecture, design, and development, and to continue to push the envelope.

River City did exactly that.

I have a friend visiting from Detroit this weekend. We went to architecture school together at Penn. But unlike me, he decided to become a full fledged architect.

Not surprisingly, he wants to see some new Toronto architecture while he’s here. I say new because he has seen the classics. So I mapped out a short bike route this morning. It’s more or less a downtown loop that starts in the St. Lawrence.

First we head west to the Queen Richmond Centre West by Allied Properties REIT (developer) and Sweeny&Co (architect). After that I’d like to show him the main drag of King West and point out two buildings by Saucier + Perrotte Architects and CORE Architects. I don’t think Unzipped Toronto is open yet.

Next it is north to One Spadina Crescent – home of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. This is one of if not my favorite new building in the city right now.

After that I figure we’ll cruise east along the Bloor bike lanes and look up at 1 Bloor East. Then it is back south to check out the River City collection by Urban Capital (developer) and Saucier + Perrotte Architects (they are getting good face time on this tour).

Then we’ll do what every good new Toronto architecture bike tour should do and end with a drink on a rooftop patio somewhere. Maybe we’ll check out the Broadview Hotel. I like the neon in the lobby bar.

If I missed anything critical, let me know.

Photo by Tiffany Nutt on Unsplash