Martin Anthony Petrov
Founder & Principal Architect
Martin Anthony Petrov founded Velvet Pine Studios in 2025 after working across Paris and London. His practice spans architecture, spatial visualisation, furniture design and woodworking — disciplines he treats not as separate fields but as a single, continuous conversation about how we inhabit the world.
Trained at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Val de Seine, Martin developed his sensibility through years of close collaboration with craftspeople, engineers, and clients who shared his conviction that good design is never decorative — it is structural, in every sense.
His work is characterised by material honesty, restrained proportion, and a deep attention to the way light moves through a space over the course of a day. He is drawn to projects where the brief is genuinely difficult — where site, programme, and budget demand creative rigour rather than easy resolution.
Velvet Pine Studios operates as a small, deliberately intimate practice. Every project is led personally by Martin, with a close network of trusted collaborators brought in as the work demands. The studio does not take on more than it can do well.
Timeline
Graduated ENSA Paris-Val de Seine
Junior architect at Lacaton & Vassal, Paris
Resident designer, Kengo Kuma & Associates, Tokyo
Senior architect at Bjarke Ingels Group, Copenhagen
Founded Velvet Pine Studios, Paris
Design as discipline
We do not believe in signature styles. Each project begins with a genuine question: what does this place, this brief, this material want to become? The answer is never the same twice.
We work slowly and carefully. We take on fewer projects than we could, because we believe the quality of attention is the most important thing we bring to a commission. Speed is not a value we optimise for.
Work with us
If you have a project in mind — or simply an idea you would like to explore — we would be glad to hear from you.
Get in touch