Celebrate the city’s vibrant creative population this December at Open House Colombo. This year’s theme, Makers’ Spaces and Other Places, invites visitors to step into a range of architectural firms, artists' studios, and home-based practices rarely open to the public.

Hosted by the Geoffrey Bawa Trust from December 5-7, the festival offers an exciting weekend of behind-the-scenes access and special activities. Participants will gain insight into artistic and design processes, from archival practices to contemporary architecture and local craftsmanship. It is also an opportunity for the city’s architects, artists, and creatives to showcase their work and engage with the public through tours, workshops, and informal chats.

Now in its fourth iteration, Open House Colombo is an official member of Open House Worldwide, a global network of 60 organisations hosting festivals and conversations about architecture, design, and cities. Open House Worldwide engages citizens in learning about local architecture and city building. It fosters understanding about the value of a well-designed city and encourages inhabitants to consider the role they can play in its design and creation, including how architecture addresses environmental, social and economic sustainability.

The Geoffrey Bawa Trust works to promote art, architecture, and ecology in Sri Lanka. By supporting Open House Colombo, the Trust hopes to encourage dialogue about Colombo's architecture and design community, and create awareness about the city as a shared space that can be shaped for and by all its inhabitants.

This year’s Open House decentralises Colombo, showcasing the city’s multifaceted creative landscape. Featuring sites across greater Colombo, the festival celebrates diversity in the production, focus, scale, and methods of the city’s makers, designers, and creatives, from team-based architectural offices to collaborative creative practices to private residential studios. Visitors will be able to contrast and compare across the different sites and are encouraged to consider how the city's physical, geographical, and social structures shape the practices.

With over twenty sites on offer, visitors will have the opportunity to experience the breadth—but by no means the full extent—of creative expression in Colombo. Sites include the rarely opened studios of textile artisans Marie and Marisa Gnanaraj, the lush forest garden of painter and naturalist Channa Ekanayake, the historic buildings of the Maradana College of Technology and University of Visual and Performing Arts, the contemporary residence and office of architect Kosala Weerasekara, as well as many more.

The weekend opens on Friday, December 5th, with an opening presentation and party at the Geoffrey Bawa Space, home to the Trust's offices, archives, and gallery.  The evening is an opportunity to hear Director of Colombo Urban Lab, Iromi Perera, discuss how public spaces are built and shaped in Colombo, as well as meet and mingle with some of the artists, architects, and creatives who will be opening up their homes and studios.

Registrations are required for all Open House sites. For more information, visit: geoffreybawa.com/open-house-colombo