Powerhouse Parramatta Set To Open in Late 2026

When we last covered Powerhouse Parramatta, in mid-2023, an opening in early 2025 was anticipated. In some reports, the more than one year delay was blamed on “unseasonal rains” last year. A statement from Powerhouse last week indicates that construction is now complete, “with interior exhibition fit outs underway across the site and final works continuing on the public domain.”

At 30,000 square meters (323,000 sf) and reportedly costing AUD 915 million (USD 658 million), Powerhouse Parramatta is considered the largest cultural development in Australia since the Sydney Opera House. The building will consist of seven large-scale exhibition spaces, learning and digital studios, a cinema, a modern theater seating up to 600 people, a public landscape at grade and a rooftop garden, a restaurant and cafe, and thirty residential studios that aim in “bringing together scientists, researchers and artists to collaborate with Powerhouse and its communities.”

Moreau Kusunoki, the lead designer on Powerhouse Parramatta with local firm Genton, is the Parisian firm of Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki. Kusunoki had worked in the office of Shigeru Ban and Moreau in the studios of SANAA and Kengo Kuma before they established their eponymous practice in 2011. They burst onto the international architecture scene in 2015, when they beat 1,714 other entries in the competition for the Guggenheim Helsinki. That project never happened, but in the ensuing years they have won a number of competitions for cultural projects, including Powerhouse Parramatta but also the renovation of the Pompidou, which they are working on with Frida Escobedo. Powerhouse Parramatta is Moreau Kusunoki's largest work as well as the largest museum in New South Wales.