Running for two weekends and the week between, Open House Dublin 2023 is the most ambitious yet!

With a focus on how lives are lived and stories unfold in the company of architecture and the built environment, for the first time all four Dublin local authorities are part of Open House Dublin, with events taking place in Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and, new for this year, South Dublin.

Join us for Open House Junior, an opening weekend dedicated to exciting interactive tours and activities for children and families, 7-8 October.

Interested in current challenges and fresh ideas about the future of Dublin? Open Table conversations are running at lunchtime from Monday to Friday, 9-13 October. Pull up a chair to listen and share your perspective over lunch on topics including ageing, housing, climate action, creativity and justice.

Open House Dublin will also host a special evening event called ‘Cities Have Feelings’ at the Lighthouse Cinema on 14 October. Through conversation and film, Finn Williams, City Architect of Malmö and artist, poet and broadcaster Rhael ‘LionHeart’ Cape from London will unearth how emotional, physical and social connections between people and their cities are formed and sustained. This is the second session of the IAF’s New Now Next 2023 season.

The final Open House Dublin weekend, 13-15 October, is the main extravaganza of tours, talks, workshops, exhibitions, and more – with exciting new additions and the classics you know and love.

Launching the Open House Dublin programme today at Dublin City Council’s Kilmainham Mill were Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform Malcolm Noonan, TD, Irish Architecture Foundation Director Emmett Scanlon, Dr Dervla MacManus, and Laura Carroll and Ciarán Molumby of Islander Architects.

Speaking at the launch, Minister Noonan said: “I would like to congratulate the Irish Architecture Foundation on the exciting new elements that it has introduced to this year’s Open House Dublin programme and on its expansion from what was previously a weekend event to one that is happening across nine days this October. I would also like to congratulate all four Dublin local authorities for coming together for this year’s Open House Dublin. The festival is a wonderful opportunity for people to interact and engage with a wide breadth of important aspects and inspirational ideas relating to the built environment of Dublin city and county.”

Also commenting, Emmett Scanlon, Director of the Irish Architecture Foundation, said: “Architecture festivals are extraordinary moments of focus and delight, where shared live experiences told through stories bind people and place. The flagship festival of the Irish Architecture Foundation, Open House Dublin is dedicated to telling the stories of over 1.5 million lives lived in the company of buildings and the built environment. This festival is a way to get to the heart of Dublin, the heart of what matters. We have much architecture to celebrate and many people to champion across Dublin, but the very words ‘open’ and ‘house’, generous and fundamental, are, this year, a call to confront and admit the Dublin we have and to imagine and describe the Dublin we need. I hope more people than ever participate in Open House Dublin because a beautiful, sustainable and inclusive city invites us all to be in it together.”

All Open House Dublin events are free, but some require advance booking. Booking will open at 9am on 14 September.

Open House Dublin is part of a new Open House Europe three-year partnership of cultural organisations that annually organise 12 Open House festivals in different European cities. Open House Dublin is also part of the Open House Worldwide international network of 50 organisations hosting festivals and conversations about architecture, design and cities across the globe from Lagos to Taipei, and New York to Santiago. As such, we are uniquely positioned to take the lead on public engagement, discourse and debate in architecture and city-making in Dublin.

Explore the programme on the Open House Dublin website.

You can also subscribe to the IAF newsletter or follow @openhousedublin on Instagram to be notified when booking opens.

Photo: Open House Dublin programme launch at Kilmainham Mill. Left to right: Ciarán Molumby and Laura Carroll of Islander Architects, Minister of State for Heritage & Electoral Reform Malcolm Noonan TD, Dr Dervla MacManus, and Irish Architecture Foundation Director Emmett Scanlon, . Photo by Marc O’Sullivan.