Open House Worldwide

The first edition of the Open House Worldwide Festival is on 14 and 15 November, 2020. A digital meeting that connects a network of 46 cities where the Open House takes place, to its citizens and local communities. A 48-hour programme of debates, virtual visits and streaming conversations with the contribution of a wide range of specialists operating in the fields of architecture, design, urban planning, among other thinkers and authors. By gathering several continents of this international network, it invites all to participate and reflect on the current context in which we live and its challenges, in its various aspects from housing, climate crisis, transport as possible responses to adjust the built environment in a post-pandemic period.This nonstop event which starts at 00:00 on Saturday 14 and ends 48 hours later is based on four themes: climate crisis, world design, heritage! and infrastructure and mobility.

Triennale is part of this premiere with a talk on Saturday, 14 November, that begins with the screening of the short film Filomena, in which audiences from all over the world are invited to watch live from 10 pm. The conversation starts with the narrative of this film that was commissioned by the Triennale and the way that Shaping our cities, shaping our lives, in a transmission that gathers the director Pedro Cabeleira, the architect Patrícia Marques from the Site Specific atelier and Samuel Alcobia, from the Baldios landscape architecture studio.

The social city, by Pedro Cabeleira - The experience of daily life and the relationship of people, and of home person, with the stage of the urban fabric. The banal and the sublime in this symbiosis.
The city built, by Patrícia Marques - The expression of the built. How buildings gain meaning through the different experiences of space; in their interior and in their relationship with the public space and the community. About the role and participation in the beginning of the Open House Lisboa.
The city territory, by Samuel Alcobia of Baldios - The physical territory where the city is accommodated. The topography and the relevancece of the water lines in the population establishment in the present and throughout the city history.

The one-hour conversation ends with a Q&A session. From 14th midnight, the Open House Worldwide website also highlights the unveil of the Open House Lisboa video, with a text presenting the city and Lisbon’s architecture. Global thinking for global challenges is the motto that serves as a guideline to find solutions for the contemporary challenges that have arisen in neighborhoods around the world. From Taipei to Chicago, London to Lagos, Lisbon to Macau, get involved on this live or pre-recorded programme focused on the current issues that we live in and face.

This first international collaborative festival, involving the organizations that take part of this Open House network, is an unprecedented and diverse programme that also aims to give a voice to all the people and agents who design, live and work in the city. Access is free from the Open House Worldwide website*.

From its first moment, the Open House Lisboa team is part of this family as the 13th city getting involved with this extensive network, founded in 2010 by Victoria Thornton and now led by Phineas Harper.

By 2019, the Open House is held annually in cities as diverse as Osaka, Dublin, Melbourne, Lagos, Porto and Lisbon and covers all five continents, welcoming around 2 million visits to spaces. All over the world, 17,400 people join the volunteer programme. With free admission, the Open House is for those who live in these cities and always takes place on weekends.

Ten years after the inception of the Open House Worldwide, it has become pertinent and inevitable to bring to the debate these issues surrounding urbanity that transcend borders and time zones in an attempt to find innovative answers, whether it is the Covid-19 pandemic or the current climate crisis.

Check the detailed programme here.