Introduction
Sanya Polescuk Architects is an experienced, innovative and dynamic practice, with an emphasis on problem-solving and environmentally sound residential and community projects.

Approach
We welcome challenging projects. Our solutions are functional, meet the requirements of the brief, and 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 be played out.

We create spatial continuity that facilitates movement and generates light. Rooms in a house or classrooms 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. Colour is exposed and enhanced, and wherever possible a natural or man-made material with distinct inherent colour is used for its permanence, solidity and longevity. Applied colour is introduced to add dynamism and underline the difference between the building's permanent structure verses 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. Those now outdated images, of the Architects and Contractors being in competition, are not needed.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.

Whether remodelling, extending & adding to private, or public buildings we take our cues from what 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.

Principal Architect & Practice Founder
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 working with Michael Hopkins, and Allsop, Lyall & Stomer. Sanya Polescuk Architects was established in 1998.

The Office
The office is located in Belsize Village, North West London. The practice is staffed by a number of young architects and designers who share high-level academic backgrounds from the Architectural Association, UCL Bartlett, TU Delft and 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.