Nightlife

When you enter an architectural office, you might expect to be ushered into a gleaming, imposing space designed to impress and intimidate you – a visual assurance that you are in the hands of geniuses with mastery over the building blocks that make up our environment. What you may not expect, however, is puppies.      Pitch Architecture’s office is in a warehouse in Richmond behind a colourful mural of the owners’ pooches. It’s a reflection of the easygoing philosophy of this growing team of young architects, designers, engineers and project managers. “We love our dogs,” laughs co-owner Alex Chan. “We’re pretty chill, and our approach when it comes to design is the same.” Chan, who is commercial and operational manager, cooked up the idea for Pitch with design director Bo Chu in a classic Melbourne way – over a few drinks after work. At first they thought they’d simply start a small-time development business – buying a piece of land, designing a house, building it and flipping it. “But in 2015 we were midway through one of our projects and people started to say, ‘hey, can you put that house on my land?’ We decided: we’re young, we have no liabilities financially, let’s have a go.” They quit their jobs and started Pitch as a fully fledged architecture firm. Things snowballed quickly. In just over three years they have completed around 40 projects (chronicled on their website): houses, apartments, extensions and fitouts. Chan attributes their rapid growth to their access