Open Heart – Foolscap Studio

Foolscap Studio is a genuine champion of the Australian design industry. Established in 2009 by Adele Winteridge in Melbourne, the cross-disciplinary design practice works on projects ranging from retail and food experiences to workplaces and macro precinct strategies.

With offices now in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, Foolscap Studio fosters a strong sense of community within the industry and society at large. Exploring the contemporary Australian identity on aesthetic and pragmatic levels while delivering enduring outcomes that enhance and inspire togetherness is central to the studio’s purpose.

Every Foolscap design is holistic in spirit, with bespoke and custom elements ensuring nuanced client needs are met.

“Our design approach is to weave together spaces and infrastructure that support people as they evolve, commercially and culturally, in the way they interact and gather together,” Adele explains. This mind-set awarded the studio the contract to reimagine the executive level of the ANZ Headquarters in Melbourne’s Docklands, completed in 2020. “This project was won through a competition process where we were up against much larger, established design firms. For me, it represented a turning point for Foolscap, as our success in winning the project was a result of our ideas, creativity and strategies for the space – a fresh approach to workplace design.”

The warm and tactile outcome replaces any stifled sense of the traditionally corporate with an atmosphere of openness and accessibility; the spaces have “hospitality and cultural narratives at their heart,” Adele explains. “It is not a static space – it is a dynamic destination with a never-changing program to meet the ever-changing needs of its people.” Repurposed materials were core to the concept (Adele’s Masters in Sustainable Development scaffolds her work), as was the collaboration with craftspeople like timber sculptor Hugh McCarthy and First Nations makers Manapan.

Foolscap Studio brings the personal to the communal, wrapped in democratic openness while advancing the potential of Australian design at an international level.

Every Foolscap design is holistic in spirit, with bespoke and custom elements ensuring nuanced client needs are met. “Often we find that what we’re looking for doesn’t exist yet, so we embark on designing custom pieces that ‘belong’ as part of the concept and are ingrained in the project forever,” Adele shares, adding that custom pieces were pivotal in modernist design methodologies, “like the Barcelona Chair for the Barcelona Pavilion, or, closer to home, the furniture designed and produced by Robin Boyd for several of his projects.”

Adele’s academic knowledge of design movements speaks to her experience as an interior design educator and program coordinator at The Whitehouse Institute of Design. Her training began in Western Australia, where she grew up admiring midcentury buildings like the Paganin House, an iconic 1960s design by Iwan Iwanoff located in a suburb of Perth. “That house has been a lasting memory for me, and I always make a point of driving by on visits back to Perth,” says the designer, who studied interior architecture at Curtin University and graduated with honours.

 “I believe the Australian design industry is the best in the world, and it is important to me that we foster and empower the industry to fully celebrate the value that design brings to all of our lives.”

Adele believes that design processes flourish when the collective creative power of a team is harnessed. “There is a reason why Foolscap is not called Adele Winteridge Studio,” she says. “The multiple creative brains, skills and techniques working together to define the best possible outcome for a client, site, brand or organisation is where we thrive.”

And thrive they are, winning countless awards and high-profile contracts while expanding their team across Australia. Live projects include a winery transformation for the Pizzini family in Victoria’s King Valley and an upgrade of the Mountain View Hotel in nearby Whitfield, with new adjoining prefabricated accommodation. First-to-market cultural projects and collaborations with architects such as Fieldwork, Durbach Block Jaggers and Ha Architecture are also on the drawing board, continuing Foolscap’s predilection for spaces that nurture communities and stimulate sustainable thinking.

Adele believes that design processes flourish when the collective creative power of a team is harnessed.

Foolscap Studio brings the personal to the communal, wrapped in democratic openness, while advancing the potential of Australian design at an international level. “I believe [the Australian design industry] is the best in the world, and it is important to me that we foster and empower the industry to fully celebrate the value that design brings to all of our lives,” Adele reflects.