One of the boldest museum buildings of the year is about to open its doors, and the first thing you notice is the skin. Powerhouse Parramatta opens on Saturday, November 7, a museum designed by Moreau Kusunoki with local architect Genton and wrapped in a bright white steel lattice that holds the whole thing up. It is the first NSW state cultural institution based in Western Sydney, and Powerhouse calls it the largest cultural infrastructure project in NSW since the Sydney Opera House.
A building that wears its structure
Instead of hiding columns inside, the design pushes the structure to the outside as an exoskeleton. Moreau Kusunoki, led by Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki, developed the idea they call lattice3 with engineer Jun Sato: three scales of steel lattice, from a fine human scale you can read up close, to a middle scale that speaks to the neighbourhood, to a large scale that reads from across the city. Arup senior structural engineer Kengo Takamatsu worked out the geometry, where X, V and N patterns carry tension and compression like a giant truss.
The Powerhouse's own story on the exoskeleton shows how seriously this was tested. A full prototype of the frame and glazed facade, roughly 7 metres high, 4 metres wide and 5 metres deep, was reviewed on October 31, 2022, before the design was locked. The payoff is inside: huge column free galleries that can be rearranged for whatever comes next.
Seven boxes and the space between
According to the architects' project notes, the core is seven large presentation spaces, each with its own form, stacked on top of one another. Between those boxes and the lattice runs a continuous in between zone inspired by the Japanese idea of ma, open and see through, with views to the river. The compact footprint frees up much of the site at ground level, so the building opens like a gateway between the city centre and the Parramatta River, with a new waterside park beside it. In total there is more than 18,000 square metres of exhibition and public space.
Five opening shows
The opening program brings more than 3,000 objects, over 1,600 of them from the Powerhouse Collection, and four of the five shows are free.
- Es Devlin: The Turning is the British artist's first major Australian exhibition, five immersive works including the Forest of Us mirror maze and Memory Palace.
- The Mall, made with OMA and AMO, digs into shopping centre design, with material from the Victor Gruen archive and Steve Jobs' Levi's 501s and a warehouse robot ballet by yang02 with KNAPP.
- Task Eternal, designed by OPEN Architecture, traces humanity's push to fly, with a Qantas Avro 504K, Leonardo drawings, an Apollo Moon rock and a James Turrell light work.
- Overflow is a First Nations led show on Water Country through the lens of filmmaker Ivan Sen.
- The Dark is an immersive world for kids aged 4 to 12, created with Kip Williams, Elizabeth Gadsby and Marg Horwell.
An opening festival runs from November 7 to 29, with more than 170 programs across 23 days, including Es Devlin in conversation on day one.
Why it matters
This one is Surfacing. New museums usually lead with the collection, but this one leads with structure, and the lattice will be the image people take home. If you caught her London retrospective in our Es Devlin Other Worlds piece, The Turning is the next chapter, and space fans should also see At Home in Space.
