OHEu Visual Stories 2025

As part of the Open House Europe project, the Visual Stories competition took place for the third consecutive year, offering an opportunity to explore and interpret the central theme of this year’s OHS festival – Future Heritage. Below, we present the winning works of this year’s competition.

The photographs by Megi Pilko, titled “What we preserve says who we are. What we build says who we want to be.” form a visual story about the architecture of memory and imagination. In every detail there is memory. Heritage is not just what survives – it’s what we choose to value. A story of connection across time – what we keep, what we change, and how we choose to remember.

Megi Pilko: “What we preserve says who we are. What we build says who we want to be.”

The photographs by Veronika Bachuk, titled “A Quiet Boundary“ observe a story about the delicate dialogue between architecture, humanity, and nature. At the edge of the city, where the pines whisper to the sea, a small cemetery lies – a quiet boundary between life and memory. It teaches us to honor the minimal, to feel the weight of emptiness, where every stone serves as a guardian of history.

The photographs by Carina Hommel, titled “Reflections of the Past, Shaping the Future” explore the dialogue between historical and modern architecture. The images capture the reflection of an old building’s façade in the sleek glass surface of a contemporary structure, symbolizing how heritage is preserved and reinterpreted in the face of rapid urban development. The juxtaposition of the traditional and the modern highlights the ongoing process of blending the past with the future in urban landscapes.

Carina Hommel: “Reflections of the Past, Shaping the Future”

All three winning visual stories from the OHS festival will be exhibited in Athens in January 2026, where the annual OHEu conference will take place. The chosen works will also be featured in a printed publication and on the Open House Europe website.

At the end of 2025, the three best visual stories from all partner European festivals will reward their creators with a trip to the annual meeting in Athens in January 2026 or to a selected festival of one of the Open House Europe partners!

Learn more about the Open House Europe project and the Visual Stories open call: https://openhouseeurope.org/

The Open House Europe project is coordinated by Architektūros fondas and co-funded by the European Union (Creative Europe programme).

In Slovenia, the Open House Europe project in 2025 is also co-funded by the Ministry of Public Administration.