August 2007

Architecture Centre Network spoke to Victoria Thornton, Director of OpenHouse.

So where is your Architecture Centre based and what area do you cover?

OpenHouse covers the whole of London and I suppose you can call us a ‘virtual centre’, that is because we are not based in a public building but we are out-there working on events and activities with many different organizations and individuals.

So what are you working on at the moment?

The OpenHouse London annual event is of course our main focus as its happening on the 15 and 16 September 2007. We call it Architecture in the Flesh, over 650 buildings across London be opened up for 48 hours to the public and it’s free of charge. It gives everyone a chance to explore and engage with contemporary and historically significant buildings including offices, studios, private homes, city banks and industrial sites. And we have new themes this year too. We are giving people an opportunity to hear about the Olympic site for example…….and we are also looking at issues of sustainability working with the Green Buildings Council, encouraging the public to think about how green issues and sustainability can be incorporated into the design of buildings.

A couple of other themes are educational buildings and workplaces; we are interested in giving the users of these spaces a voice so everyone can see the real value of good design.

And we have been helping to establish OpenHouse events in other countries too particularly OpenHouse New York and OpenHouse Dublin.

You are currently working on other projects – can you tell us about one of those.

My City Too! is a year long campaign to work with young peoples across London on their vision for the built environment which will be presented to the Mayoral candidate in early 2008 as a young peoples manifesto. We are concentrating on issues which concern young people through project strands, for example Hanging out, Shopped out, Anti-social behaviour…….. and of course there s the Archikids site.

Go on……….

It’s a website www.archikids.org.uk which encourages 7 to 12 year olds to explore architecture in a fun way through games and resources. It’s funded by Grainger the property company and we really encourage your readers to go and explore the site and its activities.

It sounds like OpenHouse are really buzzing with projects and ideas. Who funds your work?

OpenHouse has a really broa d range of funders and partners – we encourage our industry to be supportive in funding and sponsoring our work.

Thank you Victoria.

To find out more about OpenHouse go to www.openhouse.org.uk or for the Archikids project log on to www.archikids.org.uk