Official Launch of 2016 Brisbane Open House

Minister Miles, our Lord Mayor, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Kaye and I are delighted, once again, to be with you for the launch of Brisbane Open House.

I acknowledge, with respect to Elders, the Traditional Owners of the lands around Brisbane.

And what a spectacular venue has been chosen for this year’s event! Thanks to the generosity of Grocon and the combined imagination and enterprise of the Brisbane Development Association, the National Trust of Queensland, and the Office of the Queensland Architect, we are gathered today in the rooftop garden of the first office building in Australia to feature a public park.

Hobbs Park on Level 4 and the magnificent mural created by Queensland-born artist, Danie Mellor, have been attracting great public interest since 480 Queen Street opened in June. 

480 Queen Street is already living up to its promise of being a building for all of Brisbane and will undoubtedly be one of the star attractions of Brisbane Open House this year.

Consistently, the building has attracted some high profile tenants, including Allens, whose new offices I opened last month.

Creating a space like Hobbs Park, which is open to the entire community, not just to the people who work here, is a marvellous expression of the founding ethos of the Open House movement – a commitment to unlocking the hidden places and spaces of the world’s cities and sharing their fascinating stories.

As Governor, I have been very pleased (but not at all surprised) to see the enthusiasm with which the people of Brisbane have responded to Open House since the first event in 2010.

I have been equally delighted to see the concept embraced by our regional cities – and I note with pride that Maryborough, where I lived and went to school in the mid-1950s, was the very first Queensland city outside Brisbane to stage its own Open House in 2012.

Others have followed Maryborough’s lead, with Cairns, Toowoomba, and the Gold Coast all now recognising the tremendous boost that Open House can give to cultural development and tourism.

This year’s Brisbane Open House will be a most fitting celebration of World Architecture Day and I congratulate everyone concerned – the founding partners, the sponsors, the management team and the participating individuals and businesses – on once again working their magic and pulling yet another rabbit out of the hat with this year’s packed and interesting program.

Kaye and I are particularly excited that Queensland’s Government House, Fernberg, can be part of the Open House program for the second year, and we look forward to welcoming visitors – including this year for an Instameet – to the marvellous heritage building we are privileged to call home.

Fernberg belongs to all Queenslanders, and we are very pleased to be able to open the house and the estate to visitors for this special weekend.

Up here on Level 32, we can see the history of Brisbane’s built environment spread out before us. From the earliest, convict-built structures and the ornate Victorian buildings through to the marvellous creations of contemporary architecture (and the current forest of cranes!), we have a vibrant, exciting and immensely liveable city of which we can all be very proud. It is with that sense of pride, as Governor and Patron, that I now officially launch Brisbane Open House twenty-sixteen.