Sydney Open 2012 Launches - Concrete Playground

Overview

The Historic Houses Trust's service-entrance festival Sydney Open 2012 was launched this week by HHT Director Kate Clark at the minimalist Strelein Warehouse in Surry Hills. The festival invites Sydneysiders to have a look behind the scenes at private spaces and buildings around Sydney November 2-4, for a Friday to Sunday three day weekend of upcoming sanctioned nosiness.

The festival throws in its first free event this year, indulging in a Festival First Night-style Sydney Open Night on Friday night, turning the key on five buildings at no charge. Parliament House, the Barracks, On Seven at DJs, St James Church and the Chief Secretary's Building (backdrop to the Chaser's accidental APEC over-achieving) will be the first venues to be thrown open to the looming crowd, with the rest of the festival's 50 plus venues to follow over the weekend.

Saturday sees a series of smaller-grouped Focus Tours. These single-serving jaunts take detours to more narrow, private or subterranean parts of Sydney, including the iconic Tank Stream, old favourite the Central Station Ghost Tunnels, the cavity around of the QVB dome, Catalanista Rosly Street Commerical and the colour-coded, sparse Strelein Warehouse itself.

Sunday opens the CBD to the wandering multitude, as the bulk of the properties open their doors at the price of a city pass, including the newly-circular 1 Bligh Street, Hong Kong House, the Tetsuyas-fronting Old Judge's House, Government House, the Great Synagogue and a repurposed Woolloomooloo sewer. On the move, you can orient yourself with a mobile site or a new, handy-looking iPhone guide.

Like the Biennale, Underbelly Arts and the better seasons of True Blood, this city-wide show pops up only once every two years. Tickets go on sale Thursday September 27, and they regularly sell in advance. So, if the Saturday or Sunday legs of this look behind the city-wide curtain grabs your interest, get booking.

Image: Queen Victoria Building Dome, Photograph courtesy The Queen Victoria Building.