Open Heart City was a project that worked in coalition with many concerned organisations and community leaders who wished to articulate a shared vision for the large site of the former Magdalene Laundry at Sean McDermott Street in Dublin 1. This Magdalene Laundry was the last to close in Ireland, in October 1996.

Open Heart City worked to solicit and support considered, creative responses to the future development of this complex, storied urban site. We developed proposals that are fully cognisant of the forces which were at work – social, economic, political and cultural – and which are currently the context for the city’s most precarious and vulnerable human lives and built environment.