Our Story
StudioHC is a Sydney based research-driven architectural design practice founded in late-2018 with a primary focus on renovation and adaptation of existing urban contexts to craft eco-centric, personalised environments across a diverse range of typologies and scales.
Our design approach is guided by a commitment to delivering spaces which can evoke joy and comfort, informed by each of our client’s own unique aspirations. Through a close client-architect relationship, which we believe is at the heart of every project’s success, we seek to collaboratively explore form, texture, materiality and colour to ensure that each project is ultimately tailored to meet your needs and expectations.
With a diverse range of experiences across creative design, planning law, regulatory compliance and project coordination, we endeavour to provide architectural services from conception to completion, keeping our clients involved at every step of the journey toward transforming dreams into realities.
Our Director
HUGO CHAN
RIBA | RAIA | NSWARB 10803 | DEP 0001185
Hugo Chan is the Director and Chartered Architect of StudioHC, driven by research interests primarily focused around ecological and cultural sustainability, examining how practitioners can re-imagine our cities through critical interrogation and engagement with social and cultural histories of place. With a combined background in architecture and environmental law, Hugo is also the Architect & Associate - Operations of Cracknell & Lonergan Architects a firm he has been with since 2011, focusing primarily on heritage conservation, urban design, environmental planning law and residential development.
Between 2010-2012, Hugo worked between Hong Kong and Sydney, obtaining experience in the fields of architecture, construction coordination and client-end project management. Since 2016, he has served as a sessional academic at UNSW Built Environment, teaching in history and theory of architecture across the undergraduate and postgraduate programs and since 2020, he has served as a sessional design studio tutor at the University of Sydney, focusing on urban renewal and public architecture. Hugo has been a regular contributor to the Architecture Bulletin, the quarterly journal of the Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter, he has also served as an observer member of the Institute’s Heritage Committee (NSW) and since 2023, has been the EmAGN representative on the Institute’s National Heritage Committee.
Through his practice, StudioHC | Research, Hugo has undertaken a number of significant academic projects through public grants and awards. Hugo is the recipient of the 2017 Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship though which he undertook a significant project entitled: Alternative Realities | Approaches to Adaptive Reuse in Architecture. Over fifteen weeks in 2018, Hugo travelled between Hong Kong, London, New York and Sydney to examine forty case studies and interview over twenty architects. His first public presentation of this research project was showcased in August 2018, where Hugo was a speaker as part of the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning's Centenary Symposium on Cathedral Thinking. Hugo was also an inaugural recipient of the Alastair Swayn Foundation’s Strategic Research Grant, investigating the history and development of high-rise residential architecture, resulting in a high-level policy analysis report: Hope in High-Rise | An Exploration of Urban Density in Apartment Design. Subsequently, Hugo was also awarded the NSW Australian Institute of Architect’s David Lindner Urban Renewal Research Prize, and is currently focusing his research on the subject of Architecture & Belonging | An Exploration of Designing for Cultural Diversity published in 2024.
As a result of his diverse and intersectional nature of practicing architecture, Hugo was named by the Australian Design Review as one of the 30Under30 Architects and Innovators of the Built Environment for 2023-24 in recognition of his contribution to architecture across practice, research, community activism and teaching.
