About Champ
Champ is on a mission to transcend everyday product design from the ordinary to the extraordinary with playful imagination. We have fun without hurting the planet by bringing good design and sustainability together. We instigate meaningful connection in humble ways.
Founded by architect and product designer Lauren Steller in 2015, Champ is all about exploring infinite play in everyday functions. Finite play tells us there are rules to follow but infinite play asks us to step beyond the boundaries and see what happens next.
We do this by creating tableware and jewellery that happily serve their primary function with flair, such as protecting your in-the-family-for-three-generations coffee table from a hot drink, but also serve as pieces in a larger game that we invite you to play. Our trivets moonlight as geometric puzzle pieces, our tea towels become board games, together they’re unconventional dinner table ice breakers that facilitate a very, very good time.
Our range is proudly Melbourne made with a focus on sustainability. We know there is already a lot of stuff in this world, so we create with long lasting intent. Our products are made from durable, recycled rubber. We’re resourceful, innovative and our endorphins run high when our waste levels are low. We create objects that encourage you to think with flexibility. We even make washing the dishes fun.
For us good design is an opportunity to excite, educate and discover the freedom that comes when we play without rules.
Who we are and what we do.
Founder and Creative Director, Lauren Steller
Lauren Steller is many things. A designer. A doer. A play enthusiast. Not in the stage production with 30-minute-interval sense but play in its simplest form. For Lauren, play is a way to break down barriers and spark confidence and meaningful connection.
Lauren’s pursuit of play has been a lifelong interest. As a child she’d collect boxes, blankets and furniture from around the house and use them to build secret cubbies and caves for herself, brother and the neighbourhood kids. These weren’t run-of-the-mill hidey holes, they were intricate with a sense of spatial awareness typically reserved for trained professionals, not six-year-olds deciding on which technique to tie their shoelaces. The thrill of seeing others enjoy the spaces she’d create led her to study architecture.
As a practicing architect, Lauren observed the ways people inhabit spaces differently. The building is always the same but the way the individual connects, navigates and intercepts it is forever changing. We play by our own set of rules and this very behaviour inspired Lauren to develop her interest in play theory beyond architecture, launching her experimental and sustainable product range, Champ, in 2015.
Lauren’s work is interactive, intelligent and fun. She invites us to not only think outside the box but open the box, use what’s inside, play with it and make it our own.