This weekend some of the Big Apple’s most architecturally and culturally significant sites will be opened to visitors for the annual Open House New York Weekend, which celebrates the city’s architecture and urban design.

Enhanced levels of access will be granted at more than 250 different sites across the five boroughs – from historic to contemporary and from residential to industrial – for ‘tours, talks, and exploration”.

A major focus of the weekend – which seeks to explore how the buildings we create have profound implications for future generations – will be placed on leisure buildings.

Visitors will be welcomed into, among others, the Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Center; The New York Wheel, the observation wheel currently under construction in Staten Island; Westbeth, the largest artist community in the US, located in the former Bell Telephone Laboratories building in West Village; and the Tabernacle of Prayer for All People in Jamaica, the first of of five Loew’s “Wonder Theatres” built in the late 1920s.

“Open House New York (OHNY), uses buildings, and city itself, to explore ideas and tells stories, all with the goal of creating a more informed conversation about the choices we make about New York’s future,” says Gregory Wessner, executive director of OHNY.

Other events held over the weekend include tours of 17 recent parks and public spaces – including the High Line, Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Lowline Lab – that highlight the role of landscape architects in creating the city’s public spaces.

“Cities are more than just buildings and people,” said Kathy Shea, executive director of tour co-organiser the American Society of Landscape Architects-New York. “Open space is a key component to making any city liveable.

“This weekend celebrates the work of landscape architects who design and steward urban green space that not only offers beauty and areas for recreation and respite, but also valuable economic, health, community building and ecosystem benefits.”