Open House Melbourne Weekend 2021

Melbourne is a diverse and rapidly growing city. It’s estimated that by 2050 it will grow to over 8 million people. This rapid growth brings with it great opportunities but also significant challenges for the future of our city, our suburbs and our regions – challenges that have never been more urgent to address as we respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The built environment community must find new ways to reconnect and envisage transformative ways to live and work better together. Reconnect: OHM 2021 is a hybrid program of public events, talks and building tours for the highly anticipated Open House Melbourne Weekend set for Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 July.

Buildings, spaces, and programs will come together as real-life and online events this July, extending on the success of last year’s fully digital program.

New highlights such as the Victorian Pride Centre, Science Gallery Museum, and more, feature in the Weekend of events. And old favourites return to the OHM building tour program, including Collins Arch, Melbourne Quarter Sky Park, The Capitol RMIT, State Library Victoria, Koori Heritage Trust, Villa Alba Museum, Collingwood Yards and many more.

Feature public events not to miss also include the opening celebration called This is Public, a public conversation and podcast series that will launch the OHM Weekend and is co-presented with The Capitol RMIT on Swanston Street. Featuring six short presentations by leading architects, designers and creative practitioners on the theme of ‘Reconnect’.

Another flagship event is Your Ground, offering walking tours across roving locations and advocating for more equitable communities. For many women and gender diverse people, moving around their local community is complex and requires the avoidance of certain places, restricting movement and changing preferred patterns. Monash University’s gender, design and space specialists, XYX Lab, and award-winning digital consultancy, CrowdSpot, has teamed up with government partners to crowdsource perceptions of safety in public space. In this collection of walking tours, all members of the community are invited to join in a discussion about the spatial typologies where movement and access are restricted for women and gender-diverse people and to consider how we can design more equitable communities.

The full program goes live on the website in early July.

About Centre for Architecture | Open House Melbourne:

As the new umbrella organisation for all things Open House in Victoria, the Centre for Architecture Victoria (CAV) is an organisation with a big ambition ­– to inform the public about the importance of design in the built environment and why it matters to the future liveability of our cities. Providing creative and curatorial leadership, CAV oversees additional events and programs beyond the much-loved Open House Melbourne Weekend, including Open House Bendigo, Modern Melbourne, This is Public, Waterfront (part of Melbourne Design Week) and The Naked Architect series. Open House Melbourne (OHM) continues to be an independent organisation that fosters public appreciation for architecture and public engagement in design in the built environment.