Purpose
At MAZi Architects, we believe architecture is not a solitary act. It is a shared, evolving process shaped by dialogue, curiosity, responsibility, and deep engagement with people and place. Our purpose is to practice architecture as a social act - one that builds trust, fosters connection, and creates long-term collective value.
These principles guide how we think, collaborate, and make decisions.
Architecture as Dialogue
Collaboration at the Core | We approach every project as a collaborative act - grounded in shared purpose, open conversation, and mutual respect. We work with designers, engineers, educators, social enterprises, nonprofits, and global practices, forming bespoke teams tailored to each challenge. Our model is informal yet structured. We build connections across borders and pool our collective strengths to tackle ambitious projects with clarity, care, and creativity.
Global Thinking, Contextual Intelligence
Agile, Rooted, Responsive | Our international experience, coupled with the pragmatism shaped by modest beginnings and diverse contexts, gives us range, depth and sensitivity. We design with deep attentiveness to place, culture, and community, recognising that meaningful architecture emerges from understanding context - social, environmental, and economic. We act locally with a global mindset: responsive to the specific, informed by the broader.
Design by Research
Guided by Curiosity | Each project begins with research - into context, use, and lived experience. We design by listening, and by allowing ideas to evolve through ongoing dialogue with clients, collaborators, and users. Our process is iterative, inquisitive, and open-ended, ensuring outcomes that are thoughtful, original, and purpose-driven.
Responsible Practice
Resourceful, Resilient, Future-Oriented | Our environmental ambition is matched by a pragmatic, holistic mindset. We aim to do more with less - prioritising reuse, retrofit, and low-carbon strategies from the outset. Sustainability for us is not a label, but an ethic, embedded through research, technical rigour, and long-term thinking.
We are equally deliberate about how we grow as a practice. Remaining lean, agile, and collaborative allows us to adapt to changing conditions, partner strategically, and focus on work that aligns with our values. We balance creative ambition with business clarity, confident that purposeful practice leads to meaningful, enduring work.
Services
What We Do
We offer a range of services across architecture, masterplanning, retrofit, regeneration, research, and education. Our work spans scales, typologies, and contexts - guided by collaboration, curiosity, and a strong sense of public purpose.
From early-stage strategy and design to research and delivery, we work in ways that are context-aware, technically rigorous, and creatively led. Community engagement, research, and collaboration are integral to how we work - embedded across all projects rather than treated as stand-alone services.
We work across public, private, and civic sectors - wherever architecture can act as a catalyst for positive change.
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We design thoughtful, responsive buildings shaped by their context, users, climate, and future needs. From concept to construction, we combine strong architectural ideas with technical precision - crafting spaces that are joyful, sustainable, and grounded in human experience.
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We develop resilient urban frameworks and masterplans that prioritise walkability, quality public life, and equitable access. Our work weaves together infrastructure, heritage, landscape, and movement to create liveable, connected places with long-term social and environmental value.
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Working across scales and disciplines, we deliver high-quality design - from interiors and retrofit to façades, public installations, and visual storytelling. We bring conceptual clarity, attention to detail, and a deep appreciation of material, proportion, and craft.
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Research and knowledge-sharing are integral to our practice. We teach, write, and investigate questions around education, public value, and spatial justice - using research to inform our work and contribute to wider architectural discourse.
Sectors
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We design inclusive, inspiring environments for learning - spaces that foster creativity, belonging, and flexibility. Our work reflects a deep interest in educational typologies and how architecture can support different ways of learning and growing.
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We design homes, not just houses - spaces for everyday life that are adaptable, generous, and connected to place. From private dwellings to multi-unit housing and hospitality projects, our work responds to the urgent need for well-designed, affordable living environments.
Our experience spans across the UK and internationally - including affordable housing in Los Angeles and beyond - we design with light, material, and spatial generosity to support wellbeing, dignity, and long-term resilience.
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We design environments where innovation happens. Our experience spans R&D facilities, labs and high-performance workplaces, often involving complex, service-intensive systems. Working closely with engineers, we integrate sustainable technologies and data-driven strategies to deliver resilient, low-impact buildings.
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We create civic and cultural places that welcome, connect, and uplift. From libraries and galleries to community hubs and public spaces, we focus on architecture that nurtures shared experience, local identity, and long-term social value.
Core Team
Despoina Papadopoulou
Director, Co-FounderDespoina is an architect and co-founder of MAZi Architects. With over 12 years of experience working in the UK and internationally - including at Foster + Partners in London and San Francisco - she brings a deep commitment to design that is visionary and holistic, with a multidisciplinary approach underpinned by a belief in architecture’s potential to serve public value and social progress.
Her portfolio spans from award-winning educational projects in Belgium and Sweden (Ecole NOH, University Building Natrium) to landmark buildings like Apple Campus 2 and The One Tower, and master plan projects like Santa Clara neighborhood and Region City, reflecting her belief in architecture as a catalyst for innovation and progress. Despoina thrives in the early RIBA stages (0–2), shaping strong design concepts, and continues through to technical design, construction, and delivery (Stages 3–6), ensuring consistency, detail, and care at every step.
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She studied Architecture and Urban Planning in Thessaloniki and holds an MSc in Architectural Engineering from TU Delft. Her work is guided by a cross-disciplinary approach informed by experience in world-renowned studios, independent practice, education, community engagement and the public sector.
Alongside practice, Despoina is a Design Tutor at Newcastle University Architecture School, focusing on civic buildings, housing and community spaces. She also contributes to wider conversations around design quality as a member of the Design Review Panel for Designe in the North East, and works part-time within Northumberland County Council’s Planning Policy team, supporting emerging housing design standards and Local Plan work.
She is a LEED Green Associate and volunteer architect adviser for Jesmond Library, a Grade II listed community building in Newcastle, where she supports its community-led energy retrofit, interior improvements and future vision.
An optimistic and driven designer, she sees architecture as a tool to shape hopeful, equitable and meaningful futures.
Manon Eylenbosch
Senior Architect | Retrofit & Sustainability Manon is an associate architect at MAZi Architects, with over a decade of international experience across infrastructure, public realm, and retrofit projects. A longtime collaborator of MAZi Architects, contributing to the studio’s evolving practice through her technical expertise, design insight, and collaborative spirit. She brings over a decade of international experience, with a background in complex infrastructure and public realm projects, as well as a growing focus on retrofit and sustainability.
Her early career includes work on major projects like the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco, where she developed advanced skills in BIM coordination and multidisciplinary team integration. Today, Manon’s practice blends high-level technical capability with hands-on, grounded knowledge informed by her own experience with self-build, retrofitting historic homes, and leading energy-conscious upgrades.
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Manon also holds advanced certifications in sustainable architecture and continues to explore innovative approaches to low-carbon design, material reuse, and circular construction. Her work is shaped by a strong interest in environmental performance and long-term adaptability.
Advisory Partners
Katerina Examiliotou
Co-Founder, Executive Advisor Katerina co-founded MAZi Architects and continues to contribute to the studio’s strategic direction and development. Now based in London, she is an Associate Director at OLO, where she leads large-scale projects shaping infrastructure & transport that brings long-term value to communities and their surroundings.
At MAZi, she supports business development, financial strategy, risk management and public sector engagement, and consults on infrastructure and large urban-scale projects. Her insights continue to help shape the studio’s bold, resilient, and future-focused trajectory.
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With a background in architecture and experience at leading practices such as OMA and Grimshaw - Katerina brings a multidisciplinary lens to complex projects. Her portfolio includes high-profile rail, aviation and urban mobility schemes, including work on HS2 in the UK, as well as infrastructure initiatives across Europe and the Middle East. She has worked closely with both public and private stakeholders, navigating layered policy, technical, and social demands.
Beyond practice, Katerina regularly mentors emerging professionals especially through the WIA initiatives, she has served as a coach for Future Frontiers, contributed to RIBA’s Future Leaders seminars, and supports knowledge-sharing through talks and peer learning initiatives.
Tina Gough
Heritage AdvisorTina is an experienced heritage professional with a long-standing background in conservation-led practice and historic buildings in the UK. Formerly part of established practices including Spence & Dower Architects, she brings deep knowledge of heritage strategy, conservation principles, and sensitive adaptation.
At MAZi, Tina contributes in an advisory capacity, offering critical insight and guidance on projects involving historic context, community value, and the careful balance between conservation and contemporary use. Her input supports projects where understanding significance, fabric, and long-term stewardship is essential - particularly in community-led and publicly engaged work.
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Tina has extensive experience working on repair, extension, refurbishment and sensitive reuse of listed properties and working with a variety of clients – private, charitable and local authorities. Her experience covers a wide selection of historic contexts from Scheduled Monuments, all grades of listed buildings and conservation areas to Historic Parks and Gardens. Many of her interventions have been radical but appropriate to context.
Good communication skills have been a key component when leading or being part of a multi-disciplinary team, always encouraging all those participating in a project to see their own value and to enjoy working together to a common end.
She has particular interest in how contemporary design can complement historic fabric both within and adjacent to buildings, the historic environment and within highly sensitive locations – winning Awards for this type of work.
Her Urban Design qualification ensures that she looks at projects holistically with regard to their wider environment and context.
Many of her projects have included improving access to and within properties innovatively following and enhancing the principles set out in the Equality Act.
Long being an advocate of engaging communities in the design process, she has wide experience of working with people from deprived inner city areas to those in small rural settlements, including engaging with them in association with their local authorities. This work has included co-writing and illustrating local authority adopted design guides for sensitive locations which involved in-depth community consultations in preparation.
Tina is recognised as having the requisite skills to have worked on a portfolio of the Nations Historic Properties. This includes having worked for English Heritage on their properties for decades (most recently a National Lottery Heritage Funded multimillion pound project). In the past ten years she has also been involved in works for the National Trust, and has successfully worked with Historic England to achieve planning approvals.
Awards
Activity
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The project was recognised for its strategic clarity and research-driven approach, positioning housing as shared civic infrastructure grounded in landscape, soil systems, and long-term stewardship.
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The project was awarded for its pragmatic understanding of planning, environmental, and financial constraints, and for proposing a replicable model of shared living rooted in landscape, resource-sharing, and long-term buildability.
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Recognised for reframing the business park as a community-oriented ecosystem rooted in equity and environmental stewardship.
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The project was longlisted for its sensitive engagement with landscape, material clarity, and its potential to support wellbeing through buildable, low-impact design.
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The project received a distinction for its balanced response to heritage, landscape, and public life within a sensitive Greek setting.
Talks
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Despoina contributed to a J.E.D.I. public talk on inclusive housing, addressing equity, access, and social justice in the built environment. The discussion focused on housing as a civic responsibility rather than a commodity.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) North East regularly hosts a popular series of J.E.D.I. (Just Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) talks. Topics range from neurodiverse-friendly architecture and flexible working to trans inclusion.
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A public talk tracing Jesmond Library’s journey from modernist civic landmark to volunteer-run community hub, and outlining the challenges and opportunities of long-term stewardship. The presentation shared the emerging retrofit roadmap - balancing conservation, comfort, and low-carbon upgrades - while inviting local support through volunteering, funding, and shared ownership of the building’s future.
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Despoina contributed to COALFACE, RIBA North East’s Small Practices lecture series and publication, reflecting on practice from the North East. Her contribution was published in the COALFACE booklet as part of a wider regional discourse on architecture and place.
Conferences & Exhibitions
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MAZi Architects were honoured to participate in the 12th Biennale of Emerging Greek Architects, organised by the Hellenic Institute of Architecture and hosted in Patras, Greece. The exhibition brings together emerging architectural voices from across Greece and internationally, showcasing projects and practices that engage critically with contemporary spatial, social, and environmental challenges.
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At the Experimental Urbanism Symposium in Brussels, MAZi and SMAK architects presented The Learning Neighborhood: Blurring Boundaries Between Education and Housing - a research project exploring co-location as a response to land scarcity, affordability pressures, and the need for stronger civic infrastructure.
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A conference presentation advocating for the return of Europan to Greece as a practical bridge between public authorities and emerging architects and urbanists. The talk outlined how the Europan framework can strengthen transparency, strategic urban thinking, and implementation pathways - and invited municipalities, universities, and professional bodies to help rebuild a national structure for participation.