OHD 2024

Open House Dublin is a free architecture festival featuring over 200 events across the city and county each October. As part of the Open House Worldwide network, it connects Dublin to over 50 global cities celebrating architecture, design, and urban spaces. In 2024, more than 25,000 people engaged with Open House Dublin through a dynamic, all-ages programme.

For the sixth consecutive year, we led the festival’s design direction, choosing a photographic approach to highlight Dublin’s built environment. Photographer Peter Molloy was commissioned to capture diverse locations across the city’s four boroughs, creating a dialogue between urban and suburban landscapes. The campaign’s central theme—reflection—took on a literal form, with an anonymous protagonist holding a mirror in key locations. These mirrored compositions juxtaposed architectural images from the festival programme, sparking conversation about Dublin’s evolving cityscape.

Expanding the festival’s reach, we selected five diverse locations—from Dublin Airport’s runway in the north to Ballyboden Wanderers GAA at the foot of the Dublin Mountains in the south—challenging perceptions of the city’s architectural scope. The mirror acted as a portal, superimposing images from the programme to foster an immersive, thought-provoking experience.

The design system balanced sophistication and accessibility, pairing a new serif typeface with the existing sans-serif to enrich the festival’s visual discourse. We refined the colour palette and patterns, ensuring continuity while introducing fresh nuances. A major website update improved functionality, enhanced accessibility, and introduced additional filtering options, making it easier for users to navigate the expanded nine-day programme and explore new tour types, talks, and events.

The result was a campaign that captured Dublin’s architectural diversity, challenged traditional perspectives, and deepened public engagement with the city’s built heritage.