Open House Slovenia Festival
The festival
For each rendition of the festival a committee of architecture, construction and spatial planning professionals chooses a selection of (relatively) new architectural works – private houses, educational or cultural institutions, business, sports, tourism and health facilities, open spaces, etc. Most often they were previously given various prizes, honourable mentions or were otherwise recognised as significant. These chosen works usually make up roughly half of the presented buildings (about a hundred of them each year), with the others being the ones already shown in the previous years. The latest contemporary architecture is featured alongside successful adaptations of historical buildings.
Organised tours are guided by the architects or building owners/users, with more than 300 architects, owners, event organisers and volunteers participating in the event every year. All events are free, with the visits to private houses needing to be pre-booked online.
A number of other events are featured during the festival – film screenings, city walks, workshops, lectures, exhibitions (in 2014, for example, one on the issues of architecture and sensory deprivation), and so on. Usually a part of the programme is also aimed at children.
Open House Worldwide network
The Open House initiative began in London as early as 1992. It was launched by Victoria Thornton, who felt that the established mediums of presenting architecture often tend to obscure its actual qualities. She addressed this discrepancy by literally opening the doors into architectural works, thus launching the Open house London, an enterprise that has fast grown into the Open House Worldwide network.
The expanded Open house initiative offers architectural events throughout the whole year. Currently it comprises about 30 cities from around the world, with the Slovene node of the network being the only one focusing on the whole country (thus also functioning as some sort of a national showcase).
OHS online architectural collection
Web presentations of the chosen houses are equipped with photo galleries, short explanatory texts, basic technical details and lists of the people and companies involved. Thus the OHS initiative has created the biggest online Slovene contemporary architectural guide, which in 2016 featured around 300 buildings and spatial arrangements and more than 500 authors/architects. One can also browse through a list of select architectural bureaus with their short descriptions and contacts.
OHS tours and conferences
On request the Open House Slovenia organises custom made guided tours for individuals and groups throughout the whole year. Furthermore, the OHS collective also sets up sporadic tours to events like the Venice Biennale of Architecture or various cities in Slovenia and its wider region.
In promoting its objective of sustainable, socially responsible and innovative architecture, OHS is cooperating with various partners (among them the Museum of Architecture and Design, the Piran Days of Architecture, the ARHITUR conference, the IEDC - Bled School of Management, and others). In 2014 it organised the conference called 'Create a market for wooden products and services', followed by a conference and business meeting called 'Opportunities in sustainable construction' in 2015 and a participatory conference for business opportunities titled 'Innovation in healthy wooden sustainable buildings' in 2016.