Seymour Shenton Park
Bright, secluded and quietly joyful, Seymour is designed as a container for living: a blueprint for how the city might do residential design better.
Foolscap has been commissioned to design the interiors for Seymour, a residential development by H-U set within the Montario Quarter in Shenton Park, Perth. Working in collaboration with Officer Woods Architects, heritage specialists Palassis Architects and landscape architects CaPA Studio, the project brings together two apartments, eight houses and 13 green-title lots on one of Perth's most quietly considered sites.
Foolscap's concept frames Seymour as a new case study house: a contemporary addition to a lineage of midcentury residential blueprints that included Craig Ellwood, Rodney Walker, Harry Seidler and Richard Neutra - as well as building upon the site’s storied midcentury heritage fabric of the Shenton Park Rehabilitation Hospital.
The interiors are organised around the idea of framing life, with an ambition to ground the design in nature and place, genuinely fostering community and connection. As Karen McCartney writes in her book 50/60/70 Iconic Australian Houses:
“Moving through the house is to experience changing light and varied spaces as the volumes taper, open up, or outdoor areas become visible.”
Foolscap's approach takes that principle seriously, layering the interiors over Officer Woods’ architecture that provides dual-aspect layouts, floor-to-ceiling glazing, and private courtyards to blur the boundary between inside and out. The historic therapeutic gardens of the site are drawn into the interior concept through visual permeability, colour references and considered sightlines.
The architectural materials are honest and enduring with a palette of cream brick, relaid brown bricks, concrete, and steel, all referential to the site's architectural history while remaining entirely of the present. Two interior palettes are proposed – cool and warm – populated with cork, timber, natural stone, butter and hazy blue tones, and premium Australian Made fittings. The palettes give residents a genuine point of view to select, inhabit and to live by.
