Open House 2026: ACMI’s Free Lab Tours and Rare Films

For two days this July, a glass-fronted laboratory inside ACMI at Federation Square will let the public watch conservators at work – saving Australia’s screen heritage one frame, one digital file, one ageing video game at a time. It’s a rare glimpse behind the scenes of cultural preservation, and it’s completely free.

The Blackmagic Design Media Preservation Lab opens its doors on 25 and 26 July as part of Open House Melbourne Weekend 2026, which from 24 to 26 July throws open more than 180 buildings and spaces across the city under the theme “Generous City”. No bookings, no tickets: just turn up, meet in the Level 1 Foyer, and join a 35-minute tour.

Tours run four times daily at 10.15am, 11.15am, 1.15pm and 2.15pm. Groups are kept small so capacity is tight; it is first-come, first-served. Inside the lab, conservators explain the painstaking work of preserving analogue film, digital video and even software-based collections – the games and interactive media that represent the fastest-growing challenge in cultural institutions.

The lab’s glass walls mean the work is often on display even when tours aren’t running, but during Open House visitors hear directly from the specialists. They will see the preservation stations and learn what it takes to keep a collection spanning more than a century of moving image alive, from temperature-controlled storage to the forensic reconstruction of degraded magnetic tape.

While you are on Level 1, two short films from the ACMI collection loop in free 40-minute screenings daily at 10.30am, 11.30am, 12.30pm, 1.30pm and 2.30pm. “The Melbourne Concert Hall” (1982) documents the construction of what is now Hamer Hall, and “Design for climate” (1967) explores Australian architecture built to work with the environment. Both films echo the weekend’s focus on thoughtful, generous design.

ACMI’s Open House offering this year represents a deliberate pivot from the building-history tours of earlier years. Instead of explaining the architecture of Federation Square, the institution is showing what happens inside its walls: the preservation work that underpins its mission and the screen stories that connect Melbourne’s design past to its present.

If you are the kind of visitor who likes to pair a talk with a sit-down screening, the timing lines up. A 10.15am tour, for instance, can be followed by the 10.30am film session. That is 75 minutes all up and you have covered both sides of the ACMI offering. Just be aware that numbers are capped for tours, so arriving early for the first session is your safest bet.

A couple of practical points. The lab tour involves standing; limited seating is available but if you need it or have other access requirements, speak with staff at the meeting point before the tour starts. Children under five are welcome only if accompanied.

The 2026 Open House program is the largest in years, with 180-plus venues spread across the city – a scale that makes the weekend a genuine civic invitation. Compared with earlier editions, this year’s emphasis on generosity as a design principle threads through everything from community spaces to major cultural institutions.

Getting to ACMI is straightforward. Trains to Flinders Street leave you a five-minute walk away, and trams on routes 1, 3, 5, 6, 16, 64, 67 and 72 all stop at Federation Square or along Swanston Street. There is no on-site parking at the square, so public transport is the recommended choice.

While you are in the precinct, Federation Square itself hosts other Open House activities. The Koorie Heritage Trust is a short walk away, and talks and tours across the square’s buildings run all weekend. You could build a full day around the one location.

The two films screening in the lab’s companion program land with a particular resonance in 2026. One captures a Melbourne concert hall rising from the ground four decades ago; the other shows architects half a century ago already designing homes that open generously to the sun. Both make the point that good design isn’t static – it is something we are still learning. The lab, with its technicians hunched over fragile media, proves it.