About
We are people people. We place clients at the center of our process to design unique environments that enrich their lives.
We are inspired by, design for, and plan around art collections.
We foster a unique office culture characterized by generosity, curiosity, and creativity.
We nurture an intimate, talented team of engaged designers who come with a diversity of skill sets, experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives.
Our work lives in nuance, with the belief that it is better to be remembered than noticed.
We design unique interventions that both enhance the existing neighborhood and create new moments within the collective experience to gather and connect.
We actively use passive systems whenever possible, because natural just feels better.
We aim to create environmentally-sensitive additions to the built environment, operating under the assumption that the solution with the smallest environmental impact is the best one.
We’re serious, but not stuffy. Moving beyond the 20th Century canon of Western Architecture, we embrace a playful approach toward living.
We create vital spaces for connection and inspiration that encourage the experiential.
The eponymous principal of Chet Architecture, Chet Callahan’s quiet demeanor and thoughtful curiosity belie his creative genius and intimidating height. An architect since birth, he reveled in the constant construction of the San Diego suburb where he grew up. He spent his weekends touring newly minted planned communities with his doting parents, and his weekdays meticulously drawing and redrawing the interiors and exteriors he encountered. His photographic recall of spaces is legendary in his family of origin.
As a designer, Chet is known for his mastery of space. His ability to think in three dimensions — which allows him to both consider and create perspective — results in spaces that delight for reasons so quiet they often go unnoticed. Chet’s designs are both subtle and breathtaking — a point of creative tension that characterizes his body of work.
Chet’s vision is a studio of projects as bespoke and unique as our clients. He eschews stylistic repetition, and relishes in the challenge of variety. Having been both a client and a designer, he knows how important it is to both listen to the needs and unspoken wants of clients, but also push them in new directions and challenge their conception of the possible.
In his free time, Chet can be found at the gym, on the volleyball court, or cheering on the sidelines of his two teenage boys’ barrage of sporting events. He lives in Los Feliz at the Cummings Estate, studio home of Chet Architecture, with his husband, those rambunctious teenage boys, and three dogs.
Francisco spent his first six years living in the gritty outskirts of Mexico City, before moving to Texas for elementary school. Of his time in Mexico, he remembers only playing soccer with his cousins and the magical sense of heightened peace and joy he felt when in his neighborhood park — a park he remembered both vividly and surreally. This memory was assumed to be a fantasy until, years later, while attending Cal Poly Pomona, he saw the park — the place of his dreams — and learned it was Luis Baragan’s iconic Arboledas Park. Great architecture has the power to touch the soul of a child.
Francisco brings a unique fascination with detail to our studio. He wants his work to evoke passion and clarity for clients, engineers, contractors, and designers alike. When creating, he draws inspiration from his pottery — a medium that allows for the marriage of order and chaos, symmetry and serendipity. He strives to find playfulness and beauty in imperfection.
When not in the studio, Francisco can be found playing soccer or collecting plants for his garden — his current obsession. Francisco is known for diving headlong into hobbies, achieving mastery, and then moving on. Except, of course, with soccer. Soccer is a “forever love.”
Francisco is married and lives in the Monterery Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles with Maryam his wife.
Melissa Anderson brings order, discipline, and fearlessness to our studio. Born in Kansas, she was always building forts — at times with traditional materials, and at times by pruning dense pines to create spaces — addition from subtraction. Her love of design was cemented watching a PBS special on Santiago Calatrava at ten years of age. Learning how his Montjuic tower was inspired by the throw of a discus profoundly moved her; she was fascinated that a stationary object could be designed from something in motion.
Always intrepid, Melissa organized a girl’s football team at her high school because none existed and she wanted to play. After attending the University of Kansas, she went abroad for the first time, earning her masters at the Ecole Nationale d’Architecture in Paris. French culture inspired her, as she found that there was not so much division between artists and non-artists in Paris. For the French, “everyday is the art of living.”
Melissa intuitively leans into curiosity rather than fear, which informs her approach to design. She enjoys helping clients take risks on unfamiliar or novel approaches. In her free time, she enjoys designing everyday objects that can transform the mundane into the beautiful.
Melissa lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles with her husband Louie.
Josue Navarro was first recruited as a designer by his kindergarten teacher. While “all kids like to color,” Josue demonstrated a particular focus and attention to detail. When she asked him to design the set for the class play, he was delighted. Even today he still grins with enthusiasm about the project because “there were endless possibilities.”
Born in San Luis Obisbo, he grew up near the ocean in a place of beauty on the Arroyo Grande.
Josue has always been interested in things, moments, and images of beauty. In high school this manifested in film and cinematography, where he enjoyed capturing unique personalities.
As a designer he still loves introducing color into a project. While many of his classmates from Cal Poly Pomona gravitated to white boxes, Josue likes to experiment with Maximalism — not as a final design product — but as a point of inspiration for endless possibility. From there, he curates, as he caters to the needs of our clients.
In his free time, Josue enjoys spending time in galleries and exhibitions to understand what is happening now and what has happened in the past. In these settings, he is often inspired by watching people and enjoying the beauty of day to day life.
Josue lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
We’re always accepting applications from enthusiastic creative individuals. Send your portfolio to apply@chetarch.com.