I am a Cambridge-educated, award-winning, ARB-registered architect with extensive international experience at leading design studios in the UK and the EU. For me, architecture is a frame for human life. I have designed buildings around the planet, always rooted in local context and in harmony with nature.
As an architect, I love thinking outside the box and using design to help solve some of the big issues of our time — starting with the climate crisis. During my undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, I have consistently used design research as a tool to address urgent challenges. I care for people and our planet — social and environmental sustainability lies at the heart of my architectural process. Having experience researching and working in post-disaster contexts, I am passionate about humanitarian design. My MPhil project explored natural disaster recovery and community resilience in Italy, winning a prestigious Heritage Award from SPAB (The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings).
My unfair advantage is my ability to bring people together — those who dream big and believe they can make the world a better place.
Since 2018 I have been a member of the international Living with Earthquakes program led by Professor Antonello Alici, co-organising workshops, summer schools and a conference. During a year of of intensive MPhil fieldwork in post-earthquake central Italy, I collaborated with communities, local authorities, engineers and artists, developing a strategy for multilayered reconstruction of a medieval town. My sister Marta Saniewska, an Environmental Psychologist at Foster + Partners, played an important role in this process.
Together, we learned how to mobilise networks, sustain dialogue between stakeholders and push conversations beyond immediate recovery towards long-term resilience. You can read more about it here.
As an architectural designer at Adjaye Associates in London, I co-developed designs of low-tech, net zero carbon buildings, made of timber or earth, responding to the pressing environmental challenges and enhancing users’ well-being. At Kuryłowicz + Architects and BBGK in Warsaw, I helped deliver both affordable and high-end residential projects and urban regeneration masterplans, as well as a major new airport.
I learned that cutting-edge solutions are always a result of interdisciplinary collaborations and cross-cultural dialogues, and my ambition is to run an interdisciplinary design studio, do research and teach in the future.
As the master of participatory design, Giancarlo De Carlo, put it: “Architecture is too important to be left to architects”. I aim to design with and for the users of the spaces and buildings I create — because architecture is all about people.
