Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

Powerhouse is undergoing one of the most significant transformations in its history. The renewal redefines how a museum connects to its communities, its locations, and its past and future. Our design for the new website expresses this renewal through rhythm, openness, and connection.

Time and cadence are central to Powerhouse’s identity. Each location operates on its own timeline, yet all are linked by a shared sense of deep time—a layering of future, present, and past. The website translates this temporal quality into its design language and interaction model. Visitors can navigate by theme, idea, or site, moving fluidly through stories that unfold across multiple locations.

We worked closely with Powerhouse to create a platform that reflects its role as an open, evolving institution. The site design embraces porosity, linking outward to partners, collaborators, and community voices. Instead of holding all content within its own boundaries, Powerhouse connects to the wider cultural network and encourages exchange rather than containment.

Powerhouse’s activities span exhibitions, research, design residencies, education, and civic events. The challenge was to make this ecosystem legible without flattening its richness. We built a clear and flexible information architecture that allows complexity to emerge through stories rather than navigation. The result is a system that is simple to use yet capable of expressing the institution’s depth and diversity.

The website is part of a larger Powerhouse Digital initiative that supports the organization through a period of transformation, construction, and renewal. The content strategy balances excitement and clarity, informing audiences about openings and closures while building anticipation for what comes next.

A new headless and composable architecture connects all Powerhouse sites and channels. A flexible content management system provides immediate feedback and empowers the internal team to publish dynamically, turning the content group into a commissioning agency for a wide range of voices, from community members to expert journalists.

Powerhouse is not a single museum but a constellation of places and people. Our design and architecture present the institution as a living network connected to its communities, its geographies, and their histories. The platform welcomes every visitor, whether local or global, specialist or newcomer, and makes the passage of time itself feel like part of the experience.