Powerhouse Museum Parramatta

Project overview

The Powerhouse Museum in Parramatta, New South Wales, is built around an architectural exoskeleton. ShapeShift provided the design, engineering, manufacture and supply of the ShapeShell™-RC glass reinforced concrete facade panel systems for architect Genton and builder Lendlease.

Why GRC on a public cultural building

A museum facade is specified against a longer horizon than a commercial one. It is a public building expected to look considered for decades, it carries the fire requirements that apply to a building full of people and collections, and its cladding will not realistically be replaced within its design life. That combination rules out a lot of options before the appearance is even discussed.

GRC answers it on three fronts. It is cement based, so it belongs to the material family used where non-combustibility governs the facade selection rather than the polymer composites used for freeform feature work. It weathers as concrete weathers, which is a known and slow process rather than a coating with a service life. And it can be manufactured in large, thin panels, so the facade covers substantial area without the weight of solid concrete or stone.

The finish is the material, not a coating

Feldspar is incorporated into the ShapeShell-RC panels, contributing to durability and strength and producing a natural stone-like quartz finish.

That is the significant part. The appearance comes from the mineral content of the panel itself, so there is no applied finish to fade unevenly, chalk, peel or be scratched through to a different colour underneath. A panel chipped in service exposes the same material that is on its face. On a building with a stone-like public elevation that people walk right up against, a through-material finish is the difference between a facade that ages and one that needs maintaining.

It is also how a stone appearance becomes affordable at this scale. Natural stone cladding is heavy, which drives the supporting structure and the fixing system, and large formats are limited by what can be quarried and handled. A mineral-loaded GRC panel gives the reading of stone in a thin, comparatively light element.

Standard panel systems on a non-standard building

The package was delivered as standard facade panels, which on a building like this is a design achievement rather than a limitation. An exoskeletal structure produces a facade with a lot of variation in it, and the temptation is to answer every condition with a bespoke part. Resolving as much of the building as possible into a standard panel system controls cost, shortens lead times and makes the facade repeatable and inspectable, leaving bespoke manufacture for the conditions that genuinely need it.

That is only possible if the panel system is engineered alongside the architecture rather than selected afterwards, which is what the design and engineering scope on this project covered.

Related reading

• What is GRC? Glass reinforced concrete explained
• GRC vs precast concrete panels: weight, cost and where each one wins
• Non-combustible facade cladding and what the NCC requires
• GFRC panels: sizes, thickness, fixing and cost