The new Powerhouse Parramatta, purportedly Australia’s largest cultural infrastructure project since the Sydney Opera House, is set to open late 2026, with construction of the $915 million project now complete and fitout of the exhibition spaces currently underway.
The design of the 30,000-square-metre museum has been led by Franco-Japanese architecture practice Moreau Kusunoki and executed by local firm Genton. In late 2019, the pair won an international competition for the building, beating submissions from UK firm AL_A and Australian practice Architectus, Brazil-based firm Bernardes Architecture and Sydney practice Scale Architecture, local architects Chrofi and Reko Rennie, and US firm Steven Holl Architects and Brisbane practice Conrad Gargett.
Moreau Kusunoki and Genton’s design is distinguished by a latticed external structure. Inside, the building features an 18-metre-high, 2,000-square metre, free-spanning exhibition space – one of the largest in Australia. This space will accommodate the museum’s first exhibition on outer space exploration, Task Eternal, when it opens this year. A further six exhibition spaces will be accommodated inside the museum.
In addition to its role as a home for the Powerhouse Collection’s 500,000 objects, the building will serve as a hub for learning and engagement, offering overnight residences for 10,000 secondary school students from across regional New South Wales and Western Sydney to stay each year.
It will also feature 30 residential studios for collaborating scientists, researchers and artists from Australia and abroad, and a 200-seat kitchen intended to “embed the science and technology of food into the museum,” a media communique from Powerhouse notes.
On the rooftop, the building’s open terrace will house an observatory with a retractable roof, a productive garden with Indigenous plants, a greenhouse and an expanded pavilion for hosting public events.
Powerhouse chief executive Lisa Havilah said the building is “a new-generation museum, conceived to redefine the role of cultural institutions in contemporary life.”
“Through its infrastructure and programs, Powerhouse will create a dynamic ecology that will bring together industry and community, present collections, histories, and ideas in new ways,” she said. “It will be a museum embedded with innate flexibility, with the ability to continuously evolve, changing with the world to ensure that it remains relevant and impactful for generations to come.”
According to Powerhouse, the museum has achieved a 6-Star Green Star rating for its design – the first public building in Australia to do so – and will open with net-zero emissions. Sustainability has been embedded across its “design, operations and programming – from water harvesting and renewable energy, zero-waste exhibition practices to a productive landscape and Caring for Country principles developed in collaboration with the First Nations communities of Sydney,” a communique from Powerhouse notes.
The building has been delivered by Lendlease through a combination of state government funding and public donations. It is part of a broader $1.3 billion infrastructure renewal program involving expanded research and public facilities at Powerhouse Castle Hill, the renewal of Powerhouse Ultimo and the restoration of Sydney Observatory.
Powerhouse trust president David Borger said, “The completion of Powerhouse Parramatta is a landmark moment for Western Sydney and a transformative investment in NSW’s future. Its construction completion signals not only the delivery of a world-class cultural institution but a major driver of jobs, opportunity and cultural participation for one of the fastest-growing regions in the country.”
Source: Architecture - architectureau
