Stephanie G. Mathis Open House’s promotional materials borrow from the real estate industry. Still, its mission is nobler: to create a more informed audience about architecture and involve the public in decisions made regarding the built environment.
Open House is not a new concept. The Open House format combines elements of the Grand Tour and its educational value, the Open Day public institution popularised during the 20th century, and the voyeuristic enjoyment and insight into everyday life offered by historical house museums.
In cities such as London and New York, it’s easy to explain a festival’s popularity by looking at the number of tourists. Its success in other places highlights how it has been able to tap into local and repeated audiences. In Brisbane, my hometown, the number of building visits has increased five-fold in just five years. There were 66,000 visitors in 2015. Many of these visitors are repeat customers.
Most Open House programs feature buildings with a high level of contemporary design alongside those of historical significance. The Leadenhall Building by Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners, also known as the “cheesegrater” for its raked shape, was one of the most popular structures at Open House London. The most popular building, however, was George Gilbert Scott’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office Building from 1868.
The ABC Centre, designed by Richard Kirk and located in Brisbane, has consistently been one of the most popular buildings on the show since it was first included.
Open House is also a great opportunity to see the latest innovations in sustainable design. Brisbane opened the Green Square Affordable Apartments and Common Ground, an inner-city housing project that supports families. Claire Cousins renovated a 75m2 Flinders Lane flat for a Melbourne family.
Access to private homes is one of the most popular Open House experiences. They are the hardest to enter and still the jewels of the architectural profession. Grand Designs is a huge success in bringing architectural content on TV. It also satisfies a desire to see beautiful homes and other people’s lives.
This impulse is not always satisfied by luxurious homes. In 2013, I visited suburban Brisbane’s Jacobi House and Eisenmenger House. The Jacobi House, Eisenmenger House, and Chater Street Residence were all astonishing for their modest size and conception. All of them had been lovingly restored by mid-century enthusiasts who guided guests through their homes in the role of amateur experts.
Inspired by my experience, the following year, I opened a new apartment in Brisbane’s Torbreck – an iconic highrise designed by Aubrey Job & Robert Froud and built between 1959 and 1961.
Sunset over Torbreck Richard Fisher/flickr
As the owner of these houses, I was compelled by the desire to show Torbreck’s designs to a wider audience. Visitors were eager to view the interiors of a visually striking but otherwise inaccessible suburban landmark. The visitors’ surprise and delight at the clever layouts of the apartments, the bright spaces, and the playful color and material choices were delightful.
Tim Ross and Kit Warhurst’s Man About the House show is one of the parallel events that best exemplifies the soft advocacy they do so well.
Ross tells the stories of his childhood in Australia’s suburbs, of being fascinated by design, and of buying and renovating a midcentury home in Sydney. He also discusses the architecture of each venue. Ross and Warhurst toured the show in London and Palm Springs in 2013.
Ross is an expert who has become one himself and has been sanctioned as such by his profession (he was the MC for the opening of Australia’s Pavilion at the Venice Biennale). Ross is an everyday man who performs his journey of personal development in a manner that shows the value and importance of architecture for society.
Ross’s latest project, Streets of Your Town, is a two-part television series that will air on ABC next month. He takes this model and brings it to a wider audience by seeking out the best domestic architecture in the suburbs.
Ross is interested in a bigger question: how Australia lost sight of the ambition to provide quality architecture for everyone – an idea that was at the heart of much mid-century modern design – as well as where our suburbs have ended up. The series is a combination of documentary footage, expert interviews, and resident commentary, as well as Ross’s humorous and informal commentary. It takes the viewer on an emotional journey.
Open House programs have evolved to include lectures, films, and debates, as well as children’s activities.
The Sirius Building in Sydney is a brutalist masterpiece destined for demolition. Dean Lewins/AAP
Melbourne Open House 2016 had a program of films and lectures on brutalist buildings. This form of late-modernist architecture, which is generally disliked, has gained a lot of popularity as many of these buildings are being torn down. Brisbane Open House and London Open House focus on opening architecture offices to demystify architectural design processes.
Open House is a great event that raises the public’s expectations for high-quality built environments. It cannot be easy to measure the success of this event in terms of tangible results, like more heritage listings or better suburbs. Victoria Thornton is the founder of Open City and London Open House, and she has undertaken an impact study to try and achieve this.
The Open House movement is a more subtle form of advocacy, bringing architecture discussions to a wider and more diverse audience.
It is not a substitute for a strong critical culture or the direct political lobbying of professional architectural and built-environment bodies. However, it offers a direct experience of the buildings and an expansion of architectural culture.
