Next weekend's Open House architectural festival gives everyone a chance to take an inside look at a wide range of buildings, from Georgian homes to the Department of Finance, from a garda station to the offices of The Irish Times. EMMA CULLINANpreviews the event below and visits a seaside house in Dalkey

Lists of buildings that will be open to the public in both Dublin and Galway are on www.architecturefoundation.ie., tel 01-6074050. You can book online, by phone or in person, but prebooking ends on October 7th. Booklets detailing all the events and openings are available from some libraries and from the Temple Bar Cultural Information Centre at 12 East Essex Street, Dublin 2. All events and tours are free.

IRELAND WILL probably never again build on the scale it did in recent years and we certainly have plenty to be going on with. Now some people are even calling for some poorly considered buildings to be taken down or used for things they weren’t originally intended for. One proponent of such an idea is architect Alan Mee, who will be giving a walking tour of an area of Dublin – still a secret but rumoured to be a well-known vast development on Dublin’s southern fringes – and looking at how, by “unbuilding” parts of recent developments, or adapting the buildings to new uses, we could create social, cultural, architectural and economic opportunities. The tour takes place on Sunday, October 11th, at 2pm and lasts for 90 minutes and must be booked in advance at www.architecturefoundation.ie/openhouse