MEET Our Team
Luke studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, where he gained a First Class Honours degree and was awarded the Faculty Medal. His project, which was based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, was nominated for the RIBA Bronze Medal. After working at Michael Hopkins on a variety of large and small scale projects he won the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Scholarship to live and work in Tokyo. After two years spent in Japan learning Japanese to N2 Level and the Craft of Architecture, fully immersing himself in the design world working alongside Koh Kitayama at his practice in Tokyo, Luke returned to London in 2002 to continue his studies at the Bartlett. He gained a distinction in his post graduate studies and was awarded both the Bannister Fletcher Medal and the Sergeant Award for Drawing. In addition, he was also nominated for the RIBA Silver Medal. Luke has since worked at a number of prestigious practices, taught and lectured at the Bartlett and established the Tokyo Architecture Workshop in 2007, taking students each year from the UK to Japan to produce site specific installations and works based on project themes. Luke is Undercover's Design director, actively involved in the Architecture, Design process and Management of the projects the studio takes on and works closely with studio members and collaborators to ensure that the detail and craft of Undercover's projects are continually nurtured and pushed.
LUKE CHANDRESINGHE
Design Director - ARB / RIBA
With an academic training in the History of Art (with emphasis on primitive and contemporary African art) and a vocational background at the forefront of the Fashion Industry, Estelle worked in Textile Design (Lyon) assisting in collections presented to semi-annual showroom Première Vision – Indigo, Paris and traveling to Como, New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo marketing and trend forecasting. Looking for further challenges and broadening her knowledge she moved to New York to promote cutting edge Fashion Designers such as Marithé + François Girbaud, Comme des Garcons, Giuliano Fujiwara and Ter et Bantine and assisted in the marketing of Polo Jeans Company, Ralph Lauren. In London since 2000, Estelle promoted fashion photographers before dedicating herself to the study (Central Saint Martins, London College of Fashion) and practice of Pattern Cutting, Couture Tailoring and Textile Art. Estelle is Undercover's Art Director, composing and invigorating ideas giving projects inspiration, ambition, playfulness and adding a richness and layering to spaces that make Undercover's projects unique.
ESTELLE CHANDRESINGHE
Art Director
Reece has had a varied career within the wider architecture and construction industry, working in New Zealand, Australia and Ireland before moving to London in 2008 where he has since worked in the high-end residential development market. He has extensive experience in coordinating and implementing technical detail design, project management, and running construction sites. Reece is dedicated to the successful completion of the intended design, by understanding and integrating all of the factors that need to work together for robust and elegant construction detailing. Reece advises on technical issues, providing expert guidance and technical solutions.
Reece Hill
Technical Director
Iona graduated from the University of Bristol in 2018 with a BA in French and Spanish. She comes from a creative background and has always had a passion for languages and culture having been brought up and, subsequently, studied and worked all around the world. Prior to joining Undercover in August 2019, Iona worked in Sales and Business Development where she was in charge of on-boarding and retaining clients, as well as account management. She has worked in industries ranging from insurance to PR, but found her interest and aspiration to further an acute understanding in design and architecture prevailed.
IONA COLEMAN
Studio Manager
Anastasia earned her integrated Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree, at Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urban Planning Bucharest. She gained extensive professional experience in London working for the award-winning studios Methodic Practice and Tonkin Liu prior to joining Undercover Architecture. Anastasia expresses her ideas best through hand-drawn sketches and collages which thoroughly capture the atmosphere of the designed space. In her craft, she focuses on textures, materials, colours and thoughtful details. She particularly enjoys working on projects that improve the quality of life in communities while preserving the individual identities of the inhabitants. Anastasia’s Master’s thesis examined an isolated community affected by poverty and institutional ethnic discrimination in a marginal neighbourhood of Bucharest. She spent six months visiting and discussing with the residents and interacting with local authorities in order to design a new proper habitat, by engaging its members in every stage of the planning and construction process, considering their needs, culture and own impression of the home.
ANASTASIA CIUPAC
Project Leader
CID ALVAR
Architect
Maria studied at ELISAVA, School of Design and Engineering at Barcelona where she obtained her Bachelor's degree in interior design. During her career she has discovered that her passion is to create double functional spaces on her projects. Her summers were spent interning to gain experience and knowledge in different areas of interior design. Her first experience was at Rosa Clará as part of a small team in charge of the brand image (office, stores, and showrooms). She then travelled to Peru to work at Décor Center, where she focused in materials for project finishes and 3D modelling. This year, working in Disano Iluminazione Barcelona, she discovered a new world, lighting design, and learnt the bases needed in order to illuminate an interior and exterior space. This past year Maria was selected among nineteen other students to participate in MIDTalent BCD 2017 in order to work next to Arrels Foundation to help homeless through the development of a design project.
MARIA COLOMER
Interior Architect
Janusz joined the Undercover Team in January 2019. He graduated with a BA (Hons) in Architecture at UAL, Central Saint Martins, where he focused his studies on the relationships between the built environment, social interaction, and material culture and, most importantly, promoted its political conditions in the contemporary urban landscape. Spatial awareness was a crucial element for him throughout his studies. His final project investigated the urban grid, the uncover of potential - the revitalisation of North Woolwich waterfronts. He distributed the destructive site into a communal ground where the Silver town Development divided the community and created a social division. Before joining Undercover, Jan had challenged his innovative thinking by participating at the Haringey Council development management programme (DPD) where he was involved in the master planning design for spatial strategy development and growth of the borough.
It focused his passion in a sector of an environmentally sustainable future and the affordable housing strategy by analysing the cultural diversity of Tottenham, and its vibrant social community through architectural diagramming and social interaction.
Graduated BSc Architecture in 2018 from The CASS, London Metropolitan University with First Class Honours. Driven by construction work done in forgotten areas in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, as well as scenic memories collected from a life on the move, Henriette engaged in projects prioritising livelihood. Throughout her studies, each project was tightly knitted around the narratives of both home and town life, leading to a live project in her third year intending to prompt the fading village of Belmonte, in Calabria. An open-air cinema and after school club for the town kids became the proposal, recycling both a derelict palazzo and the resumption of forgotten regional craftsmanship. Engaging in live projects has enriched her understanding of a site as more than a piece of land, but its layers of life and impact. With an interest in interiors and make belief, Henriette is exploring the in between of architecture and film through set design. Her dissertation – encouraged by a RIBA President’s Medals Commendation -continues to develop through research bridging the subject of blindness to parallel understandings of space.
HENRIETTE DESMOURES
Part 1 Architectural Assistant
JANUSZ FERENC
Part 1 Architectural Assistant