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Open House Worldwide Festival – Housing and the People

Housing and the People, the second festival by Open House Worldwide, seeks global answers to what makes housing a home.

Open House Worldwide, the network of over fifty Open House organisations from around the world, will present Housing and the People on April 9th, 2022. It will be broadcast from 6am–6pm (UTC) on 9 April 2022 on YouTube. More information about the festival is available at openhouseworldwide.org

The virtual festival includes a 12-hour livestream with live tours of pioneering housing models from cities across the Open House Worldwide network, including Dublin, Lagos, London, Melbourne, New York, Oslo, Prague, Taiwan, Valencia, Vienna, and others.

The pandemic has turned the design of housing and neighbourhoods on its head, transforming perspectives and aspirations across the globe. Simultaneously, profound changes in technology, climate and social conventions are rewriting the rulebook of domestic life. As households the world-over shift in size, composition, values and dreams, how should the architecture of our homes and the layouts of our neighbourhoods evolve to match?

Housing and the People will explore these questions and more through real-time tours and conversations in bold and diverse housing projects from cities worldwide.


Highlights include:

  • The Colville Estate, a community-led neighbourhood renewal project in east London by Karakusevic Carson Architects (2011-ongoing)
  • The extraordinary hanging gardens of Espai Verd, a housing cooperative on the edge of Valencia (1992-94)
  • The cross-continental history of Lagos Island’s 19th century, neo-Brazilian inspired Water House(late 1800s)
  • The Senanayake Flatsin Colombo by Minnette de Silva, once the most famous female architect in the world (1957)
  • The public art and amenities of the mid-century Ďáblice Housing Estate, Prague (1962-83)
  • The radical Erlenmatt Ostartists’ cooperative in Basel (2019)
  • The vast idealism of New York’s Co-op City(1966-73)
  • The tranquil landscapes of Women’s Property Initiatives’affordable housing for older single women in Melbourne (2021)

Featured speakers and tour guides include architects Antonio Cortés Ferrando, Johannes Eggen and Farshid Moussavi; Housing Manager for Barcelona City Council, Javier Burón Cuadrado; and director of the National Housing and Urban Regeneration Center in Taiwan, Shih-We Liu.

Festival visitors will also enjoy more than thirty on-demand tours, debates and podcasts from across the Open House Worldwide network. Films from Buenos Aires, Lagos, London, Oslo, Seoul and others will explore historic and contemporary housing schemes and local approaches to housing issues.

The full programme for Housing and the People will be announced at the end of March.

Housing and the People is made possible with research and curatorial support from Karakusevic Carson Architects and an English-language media partnership with Dezeen.