Melbourne Airport Headquarters

Encouraging staff retention through wellbeing, Foolscap realised Melbourne Airport Headquarters as a flowing, light-filled workspace with enhanced amenity for a healthy, inspiring future. Hero furniture pieces made in collaboration with First Nations makers Manapan root the workspace firmly in place.

Foolscap designed Melbourne Airport Headquarters for 190 staff of the Asia-Pacific Airport Corporation in Terminal 4. Collaborating with Relative on workplace strategy and vision, the project delivers a future-focused workspace enhancing staff wellbeing, retention, and productivity through thoughtful amenity, and spatial organisation.

The floorplate embraces a concept of movement; with liquid lines breaking the previous flatness and creating intuitive links between zones. Layered work areas accommodate different tasks and social interactions while breakout spaces, meeting rooms, and extensive greenery support vitality and collaboration. Amenities encourage seamless transitions between personal and professional activities.

Natural light penetrates deep into the workspace through rooftop openings, while Barrisol canopies diffuse soft artificial light where structural interventions were impractical. Australian materials - including Victorian bluestone and native spotted gum flooring - form a restrained palette, complemented by a stainless-steel kitchen referencing airplane design and tonal shifts in gold, green, and brown reflecting the natural landscape and the building’s 1970s origins.

Bespoke furniture, including a five-metre boardroom table, was crafted with Indigenous joiners from Arnhem Land, embedding cultural narrative and heritage into the space. Melbourne Airport Headquarters creates a self-contained oasis that signals arrival, identity, and care, delivering a high-performance environment that reflects Australia’s unique landscape, culture, and people.