Our mission is to welcome everyone to equitably experience the architecture of Dublin through the Open House festival. This year’s festival will include tours for the D/deaf community conducted through Irish Sign Language, sensory tours at the National Gallery of Ireland and tactile tours at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI) and Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) for the blind and visually impaired. All festival events and activities will be supported by visual interpreting service AIRA. The full programme will be live on this website 16 September.
If you would like to get in touch with us about our programme, have suggestions or ideas on how we can improve or just want to know more about the IAF and Open House get in touch with us at info@architecturefoundation.ie or call us at +353 1 874 7200
What is Aira?
All Open House Dublin 2025 locations will be supported by visual interpreting service Aira. Aira is a live, human-to-human professional assistance service, an accommodation or productivity tool, that enhances independence by delivering on-demand, skilled and reliable visual interpreting. Aira (pronounced eye-rah) is a service that uses the latest technologies to connect people who would benefit from visual information, with actual humans, highly-trained professionals who provide visual information on demand – describing, reading, explaining, navigating – just about anything, safely and securely.
How can Aira assist you to take part in Open House Dublin?
Aira can assist with digital tasks including booking tickets for tours and events and assisting with website use. It can assist to navigate your surroundings while taking part in tours and events. While Aira Agents go through extensive training on orientation and mobility, Aira Agents are not a replacement for a guide dog or a white cane but rather an additional feed of visual information. To avail of this service download the Aira Explorer app on Google Play or App Store and confirm your mobile to sign up.
Then select the option “Browse Access Offers”, then type down “Open House” and select “Open House Dublin 2025″ and “Apply Offer”. Now you are able to “Call Aira for free with Open House Dublin 2025”.
Each year we aim to improve the variety of tours we offer through ISL or support with ISL translation. This years tour will be delivered by wonderful tour guide Alvean Jones through ISL at the Evan Boland Library at Trinity College and at Nellie’s Flat (Iveagh Trust Museum) ISL tours will also be available at Leinster House
If you would like to experience another Open House tour or attend an event or workshop and require ISL translation please get in touch with Adson at bookings@architecturefoundation.ie and we will do our best to organise this for you.
Open House Dublin is partnered with the National Gallery of Ireland to offer accessibility awareness training to all our volunteer stewards and tour guides. We will strive to improve both our programming and communications year on year. We hope you let us know how we are doing, and what else we should consider to support your participation.
You can contact us at openhouse@architecturefoundation.ie or by phone at +353 (0)1 8747203
The Irish Architecture Foundation’s Audience Development Strategy will result in institutional transformation as well as informing our programme choices.
Download the new IAF Audience Development Strategy (PDF, 590kb)
