A group of friends making beautiful things

 

– The situation in which we can be the architects and designers and someone else is a technical architect is tempting for us. Such cooperation allows us to focus on conceptual work, which is our strongest suit, and we want to expand in that region as much as possible. But it is difficult on the Polish market – explains NOKE Architects. We talk with Piotr Maciaszek and Karol Pasternak about how to create architecture on your own terms and replace competition with cooperation.

 

 

Marcin Szczelina: How did your cooperation start?

 

Piotr Maciaszek: We met during the first year of architecture studies. We were together in a workshop group and made many mutual friends. But we didn’t know at the time that we would be working together.

 

Karol Pasternak: Our professors were Ewa Kuryłowicz, Michał Adamczyk and Mikołaj Kwieciński. They greatly influenced the careers of those who still work in the profession.

 

PM: Going on a one-year Erasmus was a breakthrough. In my second year, I wanted to quit my studies, but going away for a student’s exchange changed everything. Karol went to Greece, I went to Portugal, where it turned out that I like studying architecture even less than at the Warsaw University of Technology (laugh). I was thinking of becoming a photographer, but the guys were urging me not to give up, that we would set up our own office and it would be fun. After returning to Poland, there was a big difference between those who left and those who stayed. We already knew that we had to go abroad and draw international inspirations, so we found EASA (European Architecture Students’ Assembly) – only there I felt that architecture could be my passion. It was a wonderful time, full of creative energy and wonderful people with whom we keep in touch to this day. All this showed us that doing architecture does not have to look like at the University of Technology or in the studios where we did internships.

 

KP: I on the other hand, had no doubts. In Athens, I practiced at DECA Architecture, participated in my first EASA in Elefsina (2007), and later I was brought to Poland by winning the competition for the Extension of the Benedictine Abbey in Tyniec, which I designed under the supervision and for an experienced architect in Warsaw. Workshops with EASA complemented the stage of very intensive work on architectural projects and competitions, in which I always tried to involve Piotr. I was thrown into deep water. The project for the Abbey won the recognition of a wide range of authorities in the field of monument conservation, both in Krakow and Warsaw. The trust gained from professors at the university allowed me and Piotr to write our own course of study and finish education in Warsaw, and at the same time get involved in co-creating NOKE. The project in Tyniec has not been implemented. European grants went to NOSPR, for which I also fought in the competition, and which received a distinction.

 

PM: Back then, we did a lot of projects for competitions, often with success. But we discovered that there were a lot of irregularities in the procedures, so after 3 years of continuous work on large competitions, we became discouraged. Apparently, it is better now, but we still rarely participate in them.

 

How was NOKE founded? 

 

PM: The head of the office where we worked ended cooperation with us overnight. And it was a breakthrough moment. We could look for a job elsewhere, which was not an exciting idea after our previous experience, so we threw ourselves into deep water and opened our own workshop. The beginning was in my apartment in Gocław, where we turned the living room into a studio for a few months. Putting together NOKE was totally spontaneous. We had no expectations and didn’t know what it was going to be. In the initial period, we ran everything completely non-business: there were about ten of us and we were more of an artistic commune than an architecture studio.

KP: We were just a group of friends who wanted to act and make projects. So we did.

 

PM: At the very beginning, we fell into the segment of private luxury interiors by complete accident. We didn’t care about marketing at all, but customers liked us and recommended us. So we made these cool interiors, which forced us to become interested in interior design and learn new things. We went to fairs in Milan, Paris, Stockholm or London – all this showed us how interiors can look like.

 

KP: It was a completely new world for me and Piotr, because we don’t come from rich families. For the first five years, we invested all our savings in trips because we knew we had to learn.

 

PM: Now everyone goes to the fair, but twelve years ago it was completely unique. It was very inspiring in terms of meeting new people and seeing the projects of world-class designers.

 

KP: We also took our clients, who were impressed that we had contacts in Milan.

 

Do you still have those clients who came because of word of mouth?

 

PM: Yes, but we don’t want to do only premium interiors. We felt great about it and if an interesting project comes up, we continue to do it, but we also want to do other things.

 

You started as an unformal group of friends, and how does it look today? 

 

PM: After a few years, it turned out that in architecture it is impossible to act as an artistic commune. We know many things today that we didn’t know ten years ago. We knew how to design, intuitively knew what we wanted, but we had no idea about the structure of the studio, the ways of working with a team, the tools to coordinate work. But we also had a great desire to learn and change, so we are still evolving. The structure of NOKE has changed quite dynamically during this decade, so did the world of design – in the meantime, for example, the topic of the climate crisis and how we should react to it appeared. From the initial ten, Marcin Adamczewski stayed with us, although he is not an architect, but a painter, a specialist in conservation.

 

KP: We met him during the project of the abbey in Tyniec, where he was first on the jury of the competition, and then represented the investor. We befriended each other and wanted to do work together. Thanks to the fact that he was older and had contacts, he brought the first few projects to NOKE.

 

 

 

What does your name – NOKE Architects – stands for? 

 

PM: NOKE is a group of friends who create beautiful things. It’s a letter game that will remain a mystery. Apart from me and Karol, four other people know its origin.

 

KP: After six years, we added “Architects” to NOKE. We rebranded and analyzed who we want to be and how to appear in the media. Or whether we want to show ourselves at all, because Ewa Kuryłowicz suggested that we should be a secret studio, like those supposedly in London, which only has a business card on the website and it is not known what it does. Rebranding was already a desire to get out of a secret, unique world. This was the moment when Instagram took off. To understand the new world of marketing, we set up our own private accounts and learned what to post there.

 

PM: Today it sounds like prehistory, but then cooperation with a brand manager was not on the agenda. We went through a process lasting several months, which resulted in the brand book and how we communicate online as NOKE to this day.

 

You started with architecture competitions, now you are most recognizable as interior designers. Do you want to go back to doing architecture?

 

PM: It’s happening, but the process takes time. At the moment, we mainly do houses, there are already a few of them. We want more architecture commusions, but because we are recognizable as an interior design studio, we keep being asked to do those. And to tell the truth we just really like to do them. 

 

KP: Over the last 11 years, we have completed dozens of very interesting architectural projects. We often return to them in conversations and imagine where we would be now in the architectural arena if these buildings were built. We are waiting for the publication of the house in Paarach, the acceptance of the house in Palma de Mallorca, houses in Pasym and several houses in Warsaw. The process of implementing such projects always takes several years. You could say we have a lot of patience.

 

PM: It was a very ennobling experience, because the investor approached us with honest information that he already had a selected project and only needed opinions on each concept he had ordered. We already had experience and realizations under our belt, but apart from competitions, we had never before seen the designs of studios that seemed to us the gods of architecture. Previously, we had only read about them in A&B. We’ve seen others do it and it was a huge shock to see the quality of these designs. We decided to show him how it can be done better.

 

KP: We also made some architecture projects on the water. For example, we implemented InfoBarka in Warsaw – now it is a private barge that can be rented. And then we mainly designed houses in beautiful locations.

 

PM: We have designed several urban villas, which are a difficult matter because they are often entangled in poor quality zoning plans, complex surroundings and small plots of land. It also happened that we were asked by investors to rescue projects from other architects.

 

KP: We received a ready-to-make project with a building permit and architectural drawings. The investor expected us to improve the facade designs, raise the standard of architecture, add something more, which would help the estate to sell better.

 

PM: Unfortunately, this caused a few people’s egos to be hurt. In Denmark, there is a division into the function of technical architect and designer architect. We played the latter role in such projects, but usually there was no willingness to cooperate on the part of the main architects. It was also a strong collision for us with the Polish establishment, mainly with the older generation. We have a completely different approach to cooperation – our studio has always been open to collaboration, we dreamed of collaborating with artists – having, for example, a sculptor or an art advisor in our team. In the past, architecture was more intertwined with art.

 

 

Are you thirsty for cooperation and support of the professional community?

 

PM: Not anymore, because we created our own cooperation networks. We do well in our bubble of co-workers, and outside of it we go out on our own initiative.

 

KP: Investors who hired us for dead-body-powdering are now proposing us projects from scratch.

 

PM: The situation in which we are designer architects and someone else is a technical architect is very tempting for us. Such cooperation allows us to focus on conceptual work, which is our strongest suit and we want to keep evolving in this region. But it is difficult on the Polish market.

 

KP: We want to create visions and concepts, technical projects can be handed over to others and supervised. We thought a lot about what we wanted to focus on and limited many activities that other people in the studio or other offices could do.

 

PM: Only now we send invitations to cooperate, and we are not imposed on someone else by the investor, so it works differently. Doing architecture is a bit like making a movie: all the functions on set are very important, all it takes is one person to do their part wrong and the movie falls apart. Contractors, investors, and architects should treat each other as one well-coordinated team, not an obstacle to achieving the goal or competition. We care about cooperation, so we often invite people from the outside to implement individual elements of the project.

 

KP: NOKE Architects is not just me and Piotr, we are not an “artisan” studio. Every person working in the office can submit their ideas and is treated seriously. This does not mean that we give a completely free hand and people work individually – it is also not the way to lead an architecture company.

 

PM: The vision of an architect as a demiurge is not a vision which we identify with. We are part of the process, we often bind it together, we give direction, but success depends on cooperation. Feedback is also important to us – confronting your ideas and giving each other constructive comments are on the agenda for us.

 

KP: And there was never any quarrel between us.

On one hand, interior design is becoming more and more popular, on the other, it is full of quasi celebrities with several-weeks-course degrees. Interior architects are often less respected and have to prove that they are not just decorators whose task is to match the sofa to the color of the walls. Do you experience a permissive approach towards your work?

 

PM: We do both architectural and interior design projects, so we can compare both approaches. I believe that interior designers are not treated worse at all. I hear about this problem from many people, but in our experience we have never been disrespected because we are doing interior design. I don’t even know if it’s more difficult for architects, because they are bound by the building law, so some things are more difficult to carry out than in interiors. The market is huge, so there is a need for cheaper projects – I have no problem with the fact that it is being developed. We have seen a lot of bad projects made by renowned studios or educated interior designers. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a graduate or not – good projects are done regardless. We have a great example of this: one of our investors commissioned two artists who did not have any architectural preparation, and did not even finish a course. In the end, the investor asked us for help, because it turned out that the artists couldn’t cope with the implementation, and during the project they didn’t think about, for example, the need to draw electrics. Despite this, they made a great interior, and we helped to realize it.

 

Since education does not matter, how is an investor supposed to choose a good architect?

 

​​PM: The most important person in the project is not the architect, but the investor. It is not enough to choose a good architect, you also need to carry out the process well: make a lot of decisions, choose contractors. There is no one size fits all. I think it’s important for a designer to be able to listen. It seems to be simple: you propose a project, the investor expresses his opinion and that’s it. But in fact, a good architect must be able to ask good questions and have the courage to question the investor’s ideas. A brief is not enough, you need to get to the real reasons behind the customer’s needs.

 

KP: As an investor, it is worth checking whether the person is able to carry the process from start to finish. We always gain customers through our projects, we avoid doing PR on visualizations, because they don’t mean much.

 

PM: It is worth answering the question why do you need a designer. Do you want a project cheap or expensive, for life or for a short time? Maybe you care about relationships and want a celebrity designer – that’s perfectly fine. We are also not designers for everyone and we will not do every project.

 

Your most popular project by far is the interior of the Va Bene restaurant in Warsaw. But which project was groundbreaking for you?

 

KP: KOPI store at Oleandrów Street, also in Warsaw. It was the first project that was published everywhere: it appeared in “Frame”, „ArchDaily” „i-D Magazine”, New York journalists interviewed us. It appeared in many books and started our process of designing the so-called haptic architecture. Boutiques are supposed to give a full picture of the brand and take you to another world, to have a story. We’ve always believed that.

 

PM: Va Bene was the seal of the process and an outcome of the path we were on. We knew it was a strong concept, but we didn’t design it for awards or magazines’ spreads. Investors came with a brief to a rather classic venue.

 

KP: People come to us probably so we do something more than they expect. Each time we think that the brief is not very interesting, we try to come up with a completely different, sometimes controversial proposal.

 

PM: We always talk honestly with investors and we are critical of both our ideas and the investor’s brief. We have never had an investor refuse when we propose better solutions. We can’t imagine doing a bad project because the investor wants it. We always offer more.

 

KP: This is also the role of the architect who is supposed to know more than the investor and share the knowledge. Recently, we have been able to implement cooperation with artists, which we have always offered to investors. This action gives the project much more value, power, and sense. We are lucky to have Ola Niepsuj’s help on board with her incredible artistic output. I dream of having a sociologist or philosopher in the project team. We talk a lot about the social aspects of architecture, but a specialist perspective would be useful.

 

 

What was the latest interesting thing that you have convinced an investor to do?

 

PM: House in Roztocze. The investor wanted to turn the old stable into a place to live. During the site inspection, however, we discovered that the foundations of an old house and a supply of local light limestone are located right next to it. We managed to persuade the investor to extend the plans and so a new building was built on the foundations of the previous one, using materials left over from its demolition, which forms a coherent whole together with the renovated barn. The new house is about 80 cm above the ground. It is supported on four discreet pillars, thanks to which it seems to float in the air.

 

KP: We didn’t want to copy the past, but rather to be inspired by the changes taking place in the Polish countryside. In this project, it was possible not only to breathe new life into what was found, but also to do it in accordance with local tradition. The reuse of old material is not only an aesthetic procedure, but also in line with the idea of sustainable development. We used not only limestone, but also oak boards obtained from the barn.

 

 

You design a lot of luxury interiors. What is luxury for you personally?

 

PM: I dream that every person would have the luxury of a space that suits them and meets their expectations. I’m not talking about hundreds of square meters, but when I look at the quality of life in Poland, where apartments are cramped and badly designed, I think that a well-designed apartment is a luxury. It should be standard.

 

KP: For me, it is a luxury that clients can come to us and make their dreams come true – that they have the funds to do it. We work in the luxury market, and we often had an ethical problem with it. Sometimes we built or ordered ridiculously expensive things – when I talk about how much a kitchen can cost or that you can move an entire lake to have a better view, people think I’m making it up. 

 

PM: I would like to have such spaces as we design, and that they would be available to my loved ones. In a way, I realize this dream by doing public projects in which I can then spend time myself.

 

KP: For me, luxury is – in life – comfort, time and peace in the implementation of all activities in private and professional life. Lack of luxury means lack of time to rest and reflect. It will also be a luxury for me to work on projects just for fun.

 

How do you see your future and the future of the profession?

 

PM: I think that artificial intelligence tools will be a big revolution. I’ve already seen a few of them in beta versions. This will relieve us of all mundane tasks such as absorptivity or exposure analysis. This will speed up the work, because it usually takes about two days to do it, so you will be able to explore more possibilities and have more time for creative work.

 

KP: I imagine that with a good brief AI will even be able to take over some of the creative work. But it will not come to the construction site and give an opinion on mockups and samples or the effect of using a given lighting or finish.

 

PM: It’s one thing to see the material on the project, another thing in the showroom, and another thing in the final space. And someone must write the guidelines and manage the process, so there will be a human behind every AI implementation, even if it’s not an architect. Design is still very exclusive, so if the development of AI is going to make it more accessible, I’m very happy about that. On the other hand, if designing each visual style is at your fingertips, then maybe values other than aesthetics will become important – for example, ecology.

 

KP: As for the future of NOKE, we are working on transforming it from a stationary office into an international cooperation platform. The pandemic has made design very detached from the need to have a permanent space. We dream of traveling around the world and doing projects in Singapore or Milan. And this is slowly starting to happen.