Hidden gems and secret corners: a rare glimpse inside Melbourne's most captivating buildings
Artist and designer Callum Preston has shared a studio with street artist Tyrone Wright, better known as Rone, for the past five years. This weekend the duo will allow members of the public inside their working space as part of Melbourne's annual Open House program.
Preston jokes that even some local residents, unaware of who their neighbours are, may wander over.
'I don't think a lot of people upstairs even know that there's artist studios down here. It just looks like it could be an office or something,' he says. 'A visual overload': stacked shelves inside Rone and Callum Preston's studio. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian
The studio is the kind of hidden gem Open House specialises in. Since 2008, the event has given the public a peek inside secret corners and oft-unseen spaces around Melbourne. While the program tends to focus heavily on architecture, the frisson of excitement for the public is in seeing doors that are usually closed to them open, and the feeling of uncovering treasures concealed in plain sight.
Across the three days, Wright and Preston will introduce their studio to visitors and roam alongside them. In-progress artworks and the pair's personal art archives dating back 20 years will be on display. The studio will also feature props used in Rone's installations, including 8,000 books nestled inside each other like babushka dolls, alongside works in progress and TVs playing video works.
Wright describes the place as 'a chaotic space' and 'a visual overload', but Preston notes 'there's a method to all the madness'.
'Everything's sort of labelled in its own way. I don't think the National Gallery archivist would love the way we do it, but we have it all here,' he says. Items from past installations in Rone and Callum Preston's studio. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian
Wright grew up surrounded mainly by tradespeople and says he never met artists when he was young. Opening studios to visitors, and giving them a look at the process behind the works, can offer younger people a window into a creative life and make it more accessible, he explains.
'Talking to younger people, I've always just kept in mind [that] this might be important for them – this moment to meet someone who's doing something that they might aspire to, or they didn't even consider that could have been real,' he says.
'Seeing an artist do something just seems more doable [to you], because you see that they are just real people.'
Past headliners of Open House have included the Myer Mural Hall and a limited lottery for rare access to the dilapidated century-old ballroom at the top of Flinders Street station (years before arts festival Rising secured use of the space). The 2025 program includes nearly 200 buildings, spaces and activities, from the new veloway in the West Gate Tunnel Project to a First Nations kayak tour down the Yarra River. Here are some other highlights. Cairo Flats Two apartments in Cairo Flats in Fitzroy will be open to the public. Photograph: Tom Ross/XYZ
Fitzroy's most distinctive 1930s apartment block – 36 'bachelor'-style flats arranged in a U-shape around a central garden, with a communal dining room, lockable garages and famous cantilevered concrete stairs – was key to the growth of apartment living in Melbourne. It was described by the magazine Australian Home Beautiful in 1937 as 'a new solution of the problem of combining what are so often incompatibles – space-economy, comfort, absolute modernity, and minimum rentals'. Tours of the building, grounds and two apartments will be led by Cairo Flats owners. Younghusband Woolstore Younghusband Woolstore has been restored and redeveloped for 'adaptive reuse'. Photograph: Open House Melbourne
Catching a passing glimpse from the train of the ghost signs that linger on the 122-year-old redbrick may be the only interaction many Melburnians have had with this industrial building. Broker Younghusband and Co bought the 1901 Kensington storehouse from wool seller R Goldsbrough Row and Co and operated the facility until 1970, after which it was used for artistic studios and costume storage for the Australian Ballet.
The building has recently been restored and redeveloped for 'adaptive reuse', leaning into its heritage elements. The first stage of that redevelopment was completed last year. A guided tour of the revived site will be hosted by the architects Woods Bagot and contractor Built on Friday, while visitors can roam around it in their own time on Saturday. Visitors can roam around the building in their own time on Saturday. Photograph: Open House Melbourne Ziebell's farmhouse
Built in the 1850s, this bluestone farmhouse in Thomastown – once known as Westgarthtown, or Germantown – has been home to five generations of dairy-farming families. The house was built by German migrants Sophia and Christian Ziebell in a European style, with 61cm-thick rubble bluestone walls, pitched roofs, adjoining rooms and a large inhabitable attic. It is situated in a rambling garden, alongside the original stone barn, washhouse and bathhouse, and Heritage Council Victoria says it is likely the earliest surviving dwelling of the migrant settlement. Ziebell's farmhouse in Thomastown dates from the 1850s. Photograph: David Johns
The site has been restored by Whittlesea city council, and as part of Open House, descendants of Germantown families will provide tours, insights, reflections and readings about farm life in the area. Henry Ziebell in the home's attic. Photograph: Jason Cheetham Tay Creggan Tay Creggan in South Yarra is now a girls' school. Photograph: Strathcona girls' grammar
This heritage-listed mansion in South Yarra, known as 'the house on the rocks', has had many lives: it has been a family home for the wealthy, a hostel for young women and, since 1969, a school campus. It was built to be a family home for architect Robert Guyon Purchas in the early 1880s, but he ran into financial trouble before it was finished and sold it to 'Hawthorn gentleman' Michael Spencer, while continuing to work on it. Spencer's widow sold it to the Catholic church in 1937, who themselves sold it to the Baptist Union of Victoria in 1969 for use by Strathcona girls' grammar school.
Heritage Council Victoria describes Tay Creggan as 'one of most picturesque houses built in Victoria in the late 19th century' and 'one of the finest examples in Victoria of the Victorian Queen Anne Revival style, incorporating many Elizabethan-period features'. Tours of Tay Creggan will run on Saturday as part of Open House. Windows inside the heritage-listed mansion. Photograph: Strathcona girls' grammar
Open House Melbourne runs from Friday 25 July to Sunday 27 July 2025
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