The UK's Pashenko Works is the latest addition to the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2023, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios. The practice co-founders, Mariia Pashenko and Koen Schaballie, show us around their own home and latest project, White Patio House in south London.
Who: Pashenko Works
Mariia Pashenko and Koen Schaballie founded Pashenko Works in 2020. The dynamic architectural practice works between Ukraine, Belgium and the UK with a main office based in south London. After completing a degree in Fine Arts and Architecture in Ukraine, Pashenko moved to the UK in 2009 to study housing and urbanism at the Architectural Association, working for various practices in London over the next decade.
Schaballie studied architecture at the Catholic University of Leuven, the TU Delft and the AA before working on a range of projects in the UK, Netherlands and Belgium. 'Fascinated and inspired by the European city', Pashenko Works was started as a way for Pashenko and Schaballie to develop their own signature approach to architecture that thoughtfully blends Ukrainian, Belgian and UK influences.
Despite the practice being relatively new, Pashenko and Schaballie’s combined experience spans projects of different scales, programmes, climates and cultures. While Pashenko leans towards master planning and concept design stages, Schaballie complements these competences, gravitating towards materiality and construction. Central to their thinking are sustainability and circular economy principles, with designs that are 'considerate, cost-effective and achieve more with less'.
Contemplating architecture as both a profession and a passion, Pashenko Works lovingly pursues projects, 'unlocking the potential of the site, the brief and the context and making the best of those opportunities'.
What: White Patio House
Offering a new prototype for dense urban living, Pashenko Works’ White Patio House is a transformation of a traditional terrace into a patio house for the studio founders' family. The home is made up of five distinct parts; the original Victorian terrace, a glass atrium, new contemporary extensions on the ground and first level, a patio garden and a garden room at the end of the site.
Daylight pours into the home’s central glass atrium, reducing the need for artificial light and conceptually serving as a 'bridge' that connects the new volume to the 'memory' of the old building. Inspired by Belgian brutalism, deliberately exposed blockwork, steel beams and columns 'delineate the whole perimeter of the site as a uniting theme’.
Minimal sliding doors open into the garden, 'dissolving the barriers’ between inside and outside. The off-white corrugated steel sheets that clad the new additions match window frames and door colours, maintaining the carefully considered colour palette of the home. Thinking not only horizontally, but vertically, side walls feature growing climbers, bird houses and bug hotels.
Embodying Pashenko Works’ ethos, sustainable design choices permeate this build –from choosing materials based on their sustainability credentials and capabilities, to including green roofs that regulate urban heating effects and encourage biodiversity. Thoughtfully maximising space within local planning constraints, White Patio House reimagines the experience of living within a congested cityscape.
Why: Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2023
Conceived in 2000 as an international index of emerging architectural talent, the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory is our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe. While always championing the best and most promising young studios, over the years, the project has showcased inspiring work with an emphasis on the residential realm. Now including more than 500 alumni, the Architects’ Directory is back for its 23rd edition. Join us as we launch this year’s survey – 20 young studios from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Congo, Ecuador, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mozambique, Pakistan, Senegal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE, the UK, the USA and Vietnam, with plenty of promise, ideas and exciting architecture.
-
EMC’s new G-Wagen seats eight in high style without losing the original’s rugged good looksExpedition Motor Company reveals its first Long Wheelbase Cabrio variant of the iconic Mercedes G-Wagen, overhauled and ready for upscale passenger transport
-
Lauded British designer Grace Wales Bonner is the new head of menswear at HermèsThe LVMH Prize winner will replace Véronique Nichanian, the Parisian house announced today
-
With no tasting notes to go by, Highland Park offers a new way of drinking whiskyMichelin-starred chef Björn Frantzén has collaborated with the Orkney distillery on ‘Between You and I’, a 16-year-old single malt whisky, where drinkers are encouraged to explore personal memories and emotions when tasting
-
The architectural innovation hidden in plain sight at Frieze London 2025The 2025 Frieze entrance pavilions launch this week alongside the art fair, showcasing a brand-new, modular building system set to shake up the architecture of large-scale events
-
RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 winner is ‘a radical reimagining of later living’Appleby Blue Almshouse wins the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025, crowning the social housing complex for over-65s by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, the best building of the year
-
‘Belonging’ – the LFA 2026 theme is revealed, exploring how places can become personalThe idea of belonging and what it means in today’s world will be central at the London Festival of Architecture’s explorations, as the event’s 2026 theme has been announced today
-
Join us on a first look inside Regent’s View, the revamped canalside gasholder project in LondonRegent's View, the RSHP-designed development for St William, situated on a former gasholder site on a canal in east London, has just completed its first phase
-
The Royal College of Art has announced plans for renewal of its Kensington campusThe Royal College of Art project, led by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, includes the revitalisation of the Darwin Building and more, in the hopes of establishing an open and future-facing place of creativity
-
Power Hall’s glow-up shines light on science and innovation in ManchesterPower Hall at The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester was given a spruce-up by Carmody Groarke, showcasing the past and future of machines, engineering and sustainable architecture
-
Celebrate the angular joys of 'Brutal Scotland', a new book from Simon Phipps'Brutal Scotland' chronicles one country’s relationship with concrete; is brutalism an architectural bogeyman or a monument to a lost era of aspirational community design?
-
Max Creasy on the future of architectural photography and a shift to the ‘snapshot’A show of photographer Max Creasy’s work opens at the AA in London, asking a key question: where is contemporary architectural photography heading?
