Making your place in the world
Human life is shaped by the spaces we share. These spaces hold our histories, reflect our values and influence how we understand ourselves in relation to others.
At Artefact, we explore how architecture might give form to these relationships and to ideas that do not yet have a physical expression, creating places capable of holding memory, culture and meaning.
We are less interested in the retrospective attribution of narrative to arbitrary formalism than in discovering what possibilities architecture can hold. We believe what is not functional cannot be beautiful, and what lacks cultural and communal meaning cannot be truly functional.
A way of thinking
An artefact connects the material world to the lives and experiences of those who encounter it. We see a similar potential in architecture: not simply as a physical construction, but as a cultural expression whose meaning emerges through its relationship with people and place.
Every architectural project begins within a set of relationships.
There is something to explore, something to make, a brief to interpret, a place to understand, and a community whose lives will be affected.
We consider these fundamental tenets of subject, object, brief, site, and community, not as independent inputs, but as interrelated conditions through which an architectural proposition takes shape.
Their relationship is never identical from one project to the next, and no single element exists in isolation.
Rather than pursuing a predetermined style, we seek to understand what each project asks of architecture, and what systems and processes might make architecture possible in return.
The practice
Founded in Melbourne in 2014, Artefact Architects is an independent architectural practice working across public, community, cultural and private projects, alongside speculative design and independent architectural inquiry.
The practice is led by founder Steven Chu and supported by a trusted network of consultants and creative collaborators. Each project is approached on its own terms, bringing architectural ideas into dialogue with its pragmatic realities.
We value the proximity between an idea and its realisation: the opportunity to question, test and refine a proposition while remaining attentive to the practical, material and human conditions that give it consequence.
Steven Chu
Founder & Director
Registered Architect, ARBV 18725
Master of Architecture, RMIT University
Bachelor of Architecture, RMIT University
Steven Chu is a Burmese-Australian architect whose work is informed by spatial narrative, fundamental reasoning, and an approach to architecture as an intellectual and cultural craft.
His experience spans architectural design, public-sector leadership, large-scale project delivery, humanitarian work and architectural education.
He has previously served as Principal Architect at the City of Casey and as a Director at Programmed, and has taught architectural design at RMIT University since 2018.
Not A Hotel
National Gallery of Victoria
City of Port Phillip
City of Sydney
City of Casey
Featured Partnerships
Selected publications
Grand Prize - Sound of Rain
2nd Prize - Parker Model
Finalist - The Lost Garden
Finalist - Parks & Restitution
Selected awards