Níall McLaughlin to design Australia's first new Catholic cathedral in over a century
By Alexander Walter|
Wednesday, Apr 15, 2026
The team led by Níall McLaughlin, recent recipient of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, has been appointed to design a new Catholic cathedral in Sydney’s Waitara suburb following an international competition.
The new cathedral will reportedly be the first in Australia in over a century to be master-planned as a fully integrated precinct. Commissioned by the Diocese of Broken Bay, the project positions the cathedral as the centerpiece of a broader spiritual, civic, and cultural campus.
Working with local firm Hayball as executive architect, the scheme seeks to emphasize permeability, public life, and sustainable material strategies aligned with Pope Francis’s environmental agenda. A new forecourt with café and bookshop aims to embed the precinct within its neighborhood, serving a growing community of roughly 250,000 Catholics.
In February, McLaughlin's firm also emerged as the winner of another international competition centered around sacred architecture, with their design for the Museum of Jesus’ Baptism at Bethany, Jordan.
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3 Comments
Non Sequitur · Apr 16, 26 11:00 AM
Meh, why bother spending any effort glorifying silly superstitions and human right abuses? Using children in religious renderings is probably the most offensive thing in my eyes.
Chad Miller · Apr 16, 26 3:19 PM
Social issues aside, I've never been a fan of using masonry to create acute angled forms and overhangs. So often there is a large amount of hidden structural steel used to support the masonry. This type of assembly just seem phony to me.
I really hope the design is using the masonry to support itself.
Gary Garvin · Apr 16, 26 7:41 PM
Apparently that exterior view is the only one available. There is also a rendering of the interior, which shows the extensive use of wood supports.
https://woodcentral.com.au/timber-to-grace-australias-first-catholic-cathedral-in-100-years/
This intrigues me a great deal, and I'm really curious to see the whole complex. It is complex and rational, yet dynamic and mysterious, as well as open and welcoming, on our scale, inclusive: we belong to something larger. I'm not Catholic, but I think that if I walked by it I would be put in a different frame of mind, one that is meaningful and engaged. The parishioners will find ways to extend that impression and add other meanings.
We need all the help we can get in our visual environment that has suffered reductions and outright destruction. And we need all the help we can get from as many voices as we can in a world that gives itself too easily to pettiness and cruelty.
I found this statement from the Broken Bay diocese:
—We are guided by the principles of humility and vulnerability; respect for others; compassion and furthering the common good; dialogue and mutual learning; repentance; gratitude and generosity; and love, which shows the true face of Christianity.
—Recommendations include calling all Christians to serve our neighbours and to serve alongside them, finding ways to bear witness to suffering and the voice of the vulnerable; to promote a culture of inclusivism where difference is celebrated; to nurture solidarity through common forms of spirituality; to engage and support the energy of young people; and to restructure projects and processes to benefit from interreligious solidarity.
https://www.bbcatholic.org.au/mission/interfaith-relations
The design supports their mission, maybe helps support and sustain it.
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