Are you excited for OH! San Diego?
Someone at one of our 2018 sites asked if I was excited for OH! San Diego, an event the San Diego Architectural Foundation is holding the weekend of March 24-25. I have to admit at the time the question was asked, excited was not how I would describe my mood :)
When you are busy caught in the weeds getting all the pieces to line up, it's hard to take a step back to enjoy the process. But, now that the sites and tours are lined up (about 80!), it is getting exciting.
OH! San Diego is part of a program started in London 25 years ago - Open House Worldwide. To be part of OHWW, SDAF agrees to host OH! San Diego every year and offer it free to the public. OH! San Diego is a celebration of our city's architecture, urban design and built environment. We plan to grow it neighborhood by neighborhood each year.
It is quite amazing what a small group of volunteers can accomplish, getting sites to agree to open their doors to the public, for free, on a weekend. Architects, designers, community members all volunteering their time to show off San Diego's hidden and not so hidden gems.
Our first press release came out Monday and some of the new sites were mentioned. The photos above are ones I've taken on my runs or site visits: Timken in Balboa Park, PLNU in Point Loma, Gruenberg Law in Bankers Hill.
The entire list of sites will be unveiled March 1 online and our lovely print guides will be available in March.
We are in full volunteer recruit mode now, would like to have 300 signed up. Also, hoping to get sponsorship for volunteer t-shirts and thank you party and perhaps a FRED car wrap for promotion and transportation.
What's really cool this year is the number of repeat volunteers from our first weekend in 2017, including Joe from New York City. We also have a traveler visiting from Italy who plans to volunteer.
After OH! San Diego, some of us are interested in visiting OH! Mexico City in April. The city is hosting their first OH! event. Cultural and volunteer tourism, it's a thing!