by Emily Cathcart

The stories behind the Irish capital’s streetscapes unfold each autumn in an architectural celebration. From well-established Georgian classics to gleaming new steel-and-glass upstarts, 100+ guided tours, films, exhibitions and events across the city span built heritage and modern urban design over three jam-packed days.

To find out more about what’s in store for 2022, ALHAUS magazine sat down for a coffee and a chat with Karen Lee Walpole, Open House Dublin Manager.

As Karen explained, Dublin is part of the Open House Worldwide network of 50 organisations starting conversations about architecture and design across the globe from Lagos to Taipei and New York to Santiago. Open House Dublin is brought to life by the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF)—established in 2005, the IAF is dedicated to the promotion of architecture as culture. For them, this is a valuable opportunity to take the lead on public engagement, discourse and debate on architecture and city-making in Dublin.

A must for building buffs and design devotees, this free festival of architecture is also brilliant for anyone who’s simply curious about how the city we see today took shape and continues to evolve. The roster of events provides loads of in-person experiences, a welcome change after a couple of years spent finding new ways to connect with participants when site visits and gatherings weren’t on the cards. 

But those challenges presented their own opportunities. In one example, Karen said, “We have quite an extensive outdoor programme that developed during COVID; cycling tours, boating tours, walking tours. We’ve kept that, because it proved hugely popular, so there will still be a lot of outdoor events.” And for those visiting Temple Bar during the festival, open air activities include drop-in film screenings of Site Specific, a series of short films.

In making Site Specific, the IAF and Open House Dublin further demonstrated the ingenuity and vision required to keep going when a full-on festival couldn’t happen. “Those films were the key elements of the last two years. And so they are all available to view again, online, but also—because we didn’t get the chance to show them to a public audience on a big screen yet—they’ll be running on a loop in Meeting House Square.”

And though traditionally it’s been a matter of popping along on the day to see what you could find, that aspect of the festival has transformed too. “When we started out, the idea was that you’d rock up and join a queue. There was always an element of the programme that would have been booked in advance… but in the last few years, it was nearly all pre-booked by necessity. Now we’re back to open access over the weekend in many locations, but there’s still going to be a significant portion that is pre-booked”—thus offering different ways for visitors to enjoy Open House Dublin.

The idea of providing choices and considering the needs of different audiences isn’t an add-on, but is intrinsically woven through the planning; this is a festival that centres inclusion. There’s a junior programme for young people and families, along with a strong emphasis on improving the accessibility of events. Karen elaborated on what that entails: “It’s a slow process. We started out last year with the IAF wanting to have an audience development strategy about accessibility and inclusivity. We worked with Rowena Neville and Sinéad Burke at the time; as part of that I worked with them on Open House.

“We put together a focus group of people from different communities who tried out different tours. It was limited because we had a limited programme at the time; but we were able to get a lot of really good feedback, both on the website and on the type of tours that might be available. And we then fed all of that data into the audience development strategy, across all of our activity.

“So we look at what might seem like simple things—I mean, things that sound simple, but people aren’t always doing them—for instance whenever we have an event across the organisation, it’s live captioned. Because more people use live captions than they do ISL [Irish Sign Language]; and sometimes we’ll use ISL as well, but live captions are actually more accessible. Our minds are more conscious about all of these things as we plan every exhibition or every programme: it’s not an afterthought, it has to be part of the planning process. So accessibility comes literally at the start of the process, which is important.”

The programme of expertly guided tours of buildings old and new has been thoughtfully designed to incorporate residential delights ranging from No. 9/9a Aungier Street, dating to the 1660s with its beautiful original timber stair; to well-preserved time capsules like the Iveagh Trust’s Museum Flat, still much as it was in 1915; to thoroughly modern re-imaginings and re-use of the city’s older stock, like Another Level Living where old and new meet and contemporary living embraces historic features.

Other treats include fresh public spaces like a new park in the Liberties, centuries-old perennial favourites including St Patrick’s Cathedral and Dublin Castle, and dozens more. With a mix of tours and events that need to be pre-booked on the website, and those which are open to join at dedicated times over the weekend, we’re mapping out our route right now and looking forward to a feast of architectural happenings.

Open House Dublin 2022 runs from 14-16 October. All Open House events are free of charge. 

openhousedublin.com
@IrishArchitectureFoundation
@IAFarchitecture
@irisharchitecturefoundation