Background
Sanya Polescuk (Dip Eng, RIBA) started working on her own in 1994 with a vision to undertake smaller scaled and more socially focused projects than she had when with Michael Hopkins and Allsop, Lyall and Stomer. Sanya Polescuk Architects was established in 1998.

Range
We are a young, energetic practice delivering contemporary architecture, always humane and often fun. Our work to date has been predominantly in the Private Residential and Local Community sectors.

Approach
We welcome challenging projects. Our solutions will be functional, meeting the requirements of the brief, but will seek to maximise the potential of the site and add elements of the unexpected.

Nothing has to be only what it appears at first glance. A space is like a stage set, enabling a variety of scenes to play out.
We create continuities in spaces, facilitating movement and generating light. Rooms in a house or classes in a school can have ambiguous definition; without clear extent, always carrying on beyond the eye, they can form an overall architecture that is both ordered and dynamic.

We like re-claimed materials, adopted, adapted and boldly fused with the best of modern design; a mixture of light Industrial components and materials, with their confident aesthetics and precision, juxtaposed with the more modest, rudimentary, craft-like aesthetics of natural materials and on-site techniques.

We treat colour with a similar logic in mind; wherever possible a natural or man-made material with distinct inherent colour is used for its permanence, solidity and capacity for survival. The colour is exposed and enhanced. Applied colour is introduced to add dynamic, and underline the difference between the permanent structure and the fit-out.

We work as a team with other consultants and contractors aiming to create innovative, realistic and exceptional quality designs. Always keeping in mind that we all work for, and with, the client. And that those now outdated images, of the Architects and the contractors being in competition, are not needed.

Working within the existing environment
The practice displays particular expertise in working with and around existing buildings. Not just interiors, but exteriors, extensions and additions. This of course brings to the fore the constraints of contextual relationships and issues of Local Authority planning and aesthetics.

While remodelling, extending & adding to private, or public buildings we take our cues from that which we find. We analyse the building, as it would have been before the most recent alterations. We assess how, and why, it had programmatically changed and it is on that basis that we look at our current brief.

This means, for instance, that the final allocation of spaces and functions within the plot of a typical London town house can reflect in some ways the original hierarchy; the serviced spaces in the middle, the serving spaces at the perimeters. The only real difference is that we have pushed the boundaries of lived areas well beyond what they used to be.

Structure
The practice works in Belsize Village, North London, in a studio that can accommodate up to 10 staff. Most design team activity takes place here. If necessary, some consultants work with us in-house for longer periods during development stages. The practice is staffed by a number of young designers who share high-level academic backgrounds from the Architectural Association, UCL Bartlett, Columbia University.

Systems
The practice operates on a Macintosh platform and all drawing output is digital. Drawings are usually issued as hard copies though most other formats are avaliable if necessary.

Professional Indemnity
Insurance is issued by:
AON Risk Services Gibraltar House Wickford SS12 9AZ.