Later on this month here in Toronto we’ll spend a wonderful spring weekend touring architectural gems in this city. For the past seventeen years our city has been celebrating its edifices with Doors Open Toronto. This is an extraordinary opportunity for locals and tourists alike to see inside the walls of buildings that are not normally open to the public, or that they usually just walk by obliviously. This year there are 130 open, and we will be visiting the Bloor Street United church (because we never go inside churches in Canada except for weddings and funerals), Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Island (because we always fly out of Pearson International), the Campbell House Museum, Osgoode Hall, and the Arts and Letters Club or Toronto (because we walk by them all the time and have wondered about it), the Canadian Music Centre to name a couple. These buildings tell a city story, just like the stories told by the architecture in places we visit around the world.

For example, Barcelona (one of our very favourite cities in the whole world) provides one of the richest architectural travel experiences that should be on everyone’s travel bucket list in our view. How can you visit a city like Barcelona without marvelling at at least a few of famed architect Gaudi’s extraordinarily creative edifices? And who can visit Chicago without experiencing it Chicago School architectural marvels, or Paris without the Louvre? Or Miami Beach without the Art Deco?

So we did spend a week in Miami Beach this year enjoying the architecture which transports you (if you let it) back in time into the 1920’s, 30’s and early 40’s to a style the exuded glamour and pleasure. And where could the hedonistic aesthetic be more pronounced than in a place like Miami Beach? So as we did our walking tour of Miami Beach architecture, we imagined what it might have been life to stay on the beach in those art deco styled hotels in the 1930’s.

The art deco district is located in the South Beach neighbourhood that has also been referred to as the American Riviera. (If you’ll pardon us, we believe that there is only one Riviera and it is in the south of France – there is no Mayan Riviera either!)

This area of Miami Beach is purported to contain the largest collection of 1920’s and 1930’s architecture in the world. There is no doubt about it that these low-rise buildings evoke a sense of history – a time when life was simpler and pleasure ruled the daily activities (as it still does today in this touristy area!).

We began our own walking tour at the Art Deco Welcome Center located at 10th Street and Ocean Drive where in the gift shop we bought a map guide to the important buildings. This is invaluable since it provides not only the location of the buildings but some of their history as well. Knowing each building’s exact provenance adds an important dimension to the enjoyment of the tour.

The art deco aesthetic is one that we particularly enjoy with its porthole windows, glass block and shiny surfaces, stepped roof lines, zig-zags, chevrons, sunbursts – these elements are what makes the buildings different than what is generally designed these days. And it tells a Miami Beach story – one you shouldn’t miss!