New Visitor Centre Opens at Australia's Twelve Apostles
The Twelve Apostles in Victoria, Australia have a new front door. The 3,300m² Visitor Experience Centre at the coastal site opened in October 2026. The opening was announced by the Great Ocean Road Authority, the state body that looks after the road and its lookouts. Great Ocean Road Authority
The building uses a rammed earth façade, walls formed by compacting layers of earth. It is planned as the main entry point and gateway to the Saddle site under the long-term plan for the area. Construction of the centre had been expected to finish in 2026. ArchitectureAU
The centre follows the opening of the new Saddle Lookout. Parks Victoria, the agency that manages parks in the state, said on 25 June 2024 that the lookout had opened to visitors. Parks Victoria
The lookout sits on Kirrae Wurrung Country. It replaces older viewing areas that could no longer handle visitor numbers. Parks Victoria describes the new structure as a safer and more accessible experience. Parks Victoria
The project is listed by Grimshaw, the architecture practice behind the Twelve Apostles Precinct Redevelopment. The firm has a long habit of staging public exhibitions about its own work. Its first show, Products + Process, was held at RIBA Florence Hall in London in 1988. Its second, Structure Space and Skin, was held at the same London venue in 1993 and coincided with the publication of the first Phaidon monograph of the same name.
In 1998 the travelling exhibition Fusion visited the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States and Japan. The show was packed into 19 customised free-standing aluminium flight cases and presented the firm's industrial design work. A year later, Equilibrium in London explored scale and context.
Later shows travelled further afield. Micro to Macro filled two galleries at the Queens Museum in New York in 2007 before the museum closed for renovation. Equation in Singapore in 2013 was the firm's first exhibition in Singapore. Elements in Milan in 2014 and London in 2015 showed industrial design work in association with Poltrona Frau.
Growing the Future City ran for nine weeks in London in 2015 at The Gallery in Foyles Bookstore. It was co-curated by Grimshaw and Futurecity. Evolution opened at RIBA in London in 2019 and then toured to Liverpool, Dubai, Shanghai and Melbourne. It celebrated founder Sir Nicholas Grimshaw receiving the 2019 RIBA Royal Gold Medal, the institute's annual award for architecture.
