Powerhouse Parramatta Opens November 7 with Devlin and Turrell

Powerhouse Parramatta opens to the public on November 7, 2026, bringing Western Sydney its first state cultural institution and New South Wales its largest museum ever built. The building, designed by Moreau Kusunoki with Australian practice Genton, spans more than 18,000 square meters of public and exhibition space along the Parramatta River. Not bad for a district previously served by precisely zero state institutions.

The opening program packs in more than 3,000 objects across five inaugural exhibitions, including commissions by Es Devlin, James Turrell and OMA/AMO. Arup handled the engineering.

What does the architecture actually do?

The building's signature move is its white steel exoskeleton: two large volumes wrapped in a structural lattice that carries the load outward, freeing the interiors of columns. That gives the museum flexibility to host installations at wildly different scales — a Turrell light environment one month, a shopping-mall retrospective the next.

The lattice has already established a striking presence on the riverfront, per the museum's own photography by Rory Gardiner, who documented construction through May and June 2026. Beyond the galleries, the project adds a landscaped square connecting the museum to the water, plus a rooftop garden, an observatory and dedicated education spaces. It's a museum that wants to function as public infrastructure, not just a box for objects.

What is Es Devlin showing?

Devlin's The Turning is her first major Australian exhibition, assembling five works that probe human perception, collective memory and the natural world. The lineup includes:

• Forest of Us — a mirrored labyrinth linking the branching structures of human lungs and trees
• Memory Palace — a three-dimensional landscape tracing moments that shaped human understanding across 75,000 years
• Collective Portrait — visitors sit opposite strangers and draw one another, feeding an evolving installation

Two further works explore drawing and the biodiversity of the Sydney region. Devlin, known for large-scale installations and stage designs, wants audiences working, not just looking.

What is James Turrell's contribution?

Turrell presents Shangri La (Over The Hump), a monumental light installation within Task Eternal, an exhibition examining humanity's fascination with flight and space exploration. The work belongs to his Ganzfeld series, which uses light and colour to dissolve spatial perception. Visitors step into shifting hues where the horizon disappears and depth becomes unreliable. Turrell has spent decades researching human vision; here the payoff is a room that quietly refuses to tell you where you are.

What else is in the opening program?

The remaining exhibitions round out the five:

• The Mall — developed with OMA/AMO on the cultural history of shopping centers
• Overflow — a First Nations-led exhibition on relationships with water across New South Wales
• The Dark — an immersive children's exhibition

The public opening also kicks off a 23-day festival of performances, workshops and conversations, spilling from the galleries into the surrounding spaces. Together, the five shows offer the first real test of Moreau Kusunoki and Genton's column-free interiors — and the first chance to judge whether Western Sydney's long wait for a state institution delivers on its 18,000-square-meter promise.