DOM
We are invited into two of Marta Nowicka’s and DOMstay’s beautiful homes.
Please, tell us about your background and what led you to your career?
Marta. My parents were both refugees; they came to England after the Second World War from Poland. My parents met at Hammersmith College. My father was studying architecture, and my mother was studying fashion. They met when he said something rude about her huge boobs in Polish; she understood, and the rest is history. She turned to him and said in Polish, you’re so rude.
So I came from a very creative family, with a fusion of Polish and English culture. We spoke Polish at home; my grandmother lived with us. Then sadly, my parents divorced.
My mother started buying a house, doing it up and selling it after 18 months. That is how she made a living. Even though she was a fashion designer, when she divorced, she just decided to do her own thing, rather than running a shop and creating four seasons a year.
We moved house every 18 months from when I was seven till I was 18 when I left home. So I got used to living on building sites and loved it because everything was in transition, and it was exciting, with people coming and going. The minute we finished a house, I was anticipating moving, and the friendships I’d made with neighbours would probably end. This was predominantly in London; we did move to Devon and then back to live in West London.
Schooling was a bit disrupted; my reading, writing and being dyslexic, weren’t up to scratch. So I had to cram to get my O and A Levels. My father was an architect, so I worked with him for a year. Where I learned how to draw, he was old school. So I learned how to do proper sections, elevations and details. I always loved being in his studio, looking at architectural drawings, and I thought I wanted to become an architect. Still, because of the disruption in my education, I couldn’t quite get the grades in maths and physics.
Then I went to art school in Kingston, where I did a foundation course, which was just fantastic. I suddenly felt at home, like I’d arrived in my tribe, amongst people with a shared language; it was inspiring. Then I heard about the interior architecture course at Kingston, which is quite a famous course where Fred Scott, Ben Kelly and Alan Phillips tutored. The course was all about taking existing buildings and doing a change of use and adapting and recycling and reusing. It is about taking something incredibly unique about a building and moving it on, economically and socially and historically. And that is what I’ve done since then; that is where the passion started.
I think I was trying to build a dialogue with my father because he left when I was seven, and sadly, I didn’t see him then for two years. That was traumatic for me; I loved my father; he was a larger-than-life character. A fisherman, a sailor and he used to shoot, because he was sent to a prison camp in Siberia for three years where they would shoot small animals with a catapult for food; that’s how the family survived. My grandfather was a doctor, and that is how the family eventually made it to the UK; they needed doctors.
My father enjoyed that I wanted to learn. He became my mentor and taught me many things. I always used to ask him how to detail things, but I was also a bit of a rebel; I’d think you’ve explained it to me now, I’ve got the principal, and I’m going to do it my way.
I got a degree in interior architecture from Kingston and then started working for architects in London. It was nonstop; it was very intense working in architecture. You work very long days and nights, hard work and changes; it’s a very intense process. And I really got into it.
At the beginning of 1992, a massive recession and businesses were making everybody redundant. I took voluntary redundancy and started teaching interior architecture; they say the best way to learn is to teach, which I think is very accurate. Plus, I freelanced for architectural practices and started doing my own projects. Then I met my business partner, who I had studied with. We created a company called Nowicka Stern and did lots of fun things in London. We did The Gate Restaurant, Fabric, Hanover Grand Nightclub, Cyberia, the first internet café in London. So that was very good, fun. And that’s when I bought my first property. Everything happened in one year, ’92.
I bought the place to live in; I didn’t have the concept in mind of developing at that time. I looked at 66 flats and drove the estate agent mad; I still have the list. And eventually I bought a great space up in Archway, in the roof of a mansion block which I later re-mortgaged to buy my first development.
By then, I was married to Sean Kimber, and we moved from Archway to Shoreditch in East London off Old Street. When it was all happening in that area, he found the warehouse; we had looked at live workspaces in Dalston and Hoxton around 1996, ’97 and ’98.
An old lithographic printing factory was about 270 meters, a nice size. We got a change of use for a live workspace, and I moved my design practice, Nowicka Stern, to the first floor, and Sean had his art studio there as well; he was a Young British Artist. He could weld, so he put wheels on an industrial kitchen unit, and we cut a hole through it to use butane gas canisters. We wheeled it around to open up the space when we had a big event or party. A totally mobile kitchen!
Then in 2001, I was pregnant, and tragically, my husband died. I had my son Lucas a couple of months after; a challenging time. I decided to leave my practice, Nowicka Stern. I needed time out; suddenly I was a mum, a single mum. I needed that time to come to terms with many changes very quickly. I think it was two years out; I can’t remember; It was a bit of a blur.
I lived in a massive warehouse with a baby and no money, so I carved a bit off to rent out. They were yuppifying the building next door, and the builders literally broke through the wall by accident, and I’m sitting there on the sofa crying and breastfeeding. I was thinking what was happening to me.
Then it all started; I needed to make money and be a full-time mum to Lucas. I re-mortgaged again and made my first little one-bedroom place. I was feeling isolated, so I went back into teaching. I went and taught at Kingston on the course I had initially studied then at London Met. Education was an excellent place for me to be; it is very sociable, meeting many people from diverse walks of life and backgrounds. I needed to connect with people and see that there was a life out there. And that’s where I formulated the plan to divide the warehouse into three units. And that was my first development.
In the meantime, around 2004, I spotted the old Labour Party Headquarters on Charles Square in Hoxton. It’s a Georgian building, a grade two star listed. Developers had been looking at it, but nobody wanted to buy it because it was a grade two star. So you couldn’t carve it up into multiple small units, you would have to keep the original, large, rooms.
But I was happy that it is grade two star listed and could make it into generous, spacious apartments. The panelling and everything were listed; I worked with the English Heritage. That was my first proper development, which was very scary. I completely re-mortgaged the warehouse and took a considerable risk. But by then I thought, what worse can happen to me? But then we did have a fire at Charles Square, which was pretty horrific. When The George in Rye had a fire, I was texting Katie; it was just awful; I can sympathise. It is such a scary, horrible thing to go through.
With such life-changing events, is that when you decided to move down to the coast?
Marta. By default, I am doing property development. It’s excellent; I could be a hands-on mum working from home, doing the school run.
I no longer spend hours at client meetings or travel; I can do both. By now, I’m a designer developer; no set plan; it just happens organically.
Then my dad died and left me a little bit of money, which I wanted to invest in memory of him.
I looked to the South East, to Rye; I’d been coming here on and off for 25 years. My uncle later told me that Rye was my grandmother’s favourite place in the UK as it reminded her of Lublin, her hometown in Poland. I spotted Coastguards Cottage on Right Move, and I came to see it. I thought it was wild. It’s like being in a Tarkovsky film. Bleak with extreme wind. It is an excellent contrast to being in the East End of London. I got it and did a minimal but functional refurb. Unfortunately, it had been vandalised but had all the original features.
I just cleaned it, stripped it, sorted the plumbing, electricity, you know, painted it white, and left it original with some quirky furniture and details. It’s an amazing location, everybody just loved it. We didn’t live here full-time; we’d come and go and share it with all our friends. When we moved in, I had 86 people to stay, although not in one go! Between July and September, nonstop people came to visit from London and Europe – just brilliant and by back to school time, I was shattered!
My social life here is much busier; now, it has overtaken London life for sure. Rye felt like the perfect place, and I was itching for another development project. I started looking around, and St John came on the market. I saw it on a Friday; it was sealed bids which had to be in by Monday. I thought I couldn’t do it; it’s just too tight. I let it go; I was upset because I knew I liked the building, but I hadn’t visited it yet.
I’ve always bought commercial property and done a change of use to residential. It’s a significant risk to get a change of use and then planning. I must put a perfect argument forward to get the change of use and always have plan A, B and C just in case I don’t get it. St John went under offer for seven or eight months. I kept popping into the agents in Rye to ask if it was back on the market.
Then one day it came on the market at nine o’clock on Monday morning, and I’d bought it by 9:30. It was an old building in need of major work, but I wasn’t daunted by the work ahead because I knew what to expect. The planning took a while because everybody opposed it at first. Eventually, I got the planner on board; you must make the journey with Rother. I used local materials like Lydd handmade tiles; I used medieval concept metaphor and all original materials.
So, we got planning, built it, and then moved to St John. During the first lockdown, we lived there full-time with my mother. It was the easiest place to look after mum; she has dementia, and I had all the family at home helping. That’s when Voytek, my partner, started planting the garden. He is an original pole, not a plastic pole like me!
At this stage, I have a portfolio of 12 properties. Ten are in London, and two are here. I never had a name or brand; I was designing and developing in interior architecture. Then when I met Voytek seven years ago, we went to Warsaw together and Voytek found this fantastic place to stay called Autor Room. It was two apartments knocked together, and four architects owned it. Each architect did their room and had an overall brand. They rented the rooms out with a shared sitting and kitchen dining area. They were sitting there having a meeting, it was their place, but you could rent a room. I love the space and the concept; it felt so egalitarian and open. They had a whole philosophy to their brand.
I thought, well, I don’t have a brand. I don’t have a name. So that weekend, I came up with the name DOM, which means house, home in Polish. I thought that’s an excellent name for my brand. I take commercial buildings, take the risk and make them into homes. Some of the homes are to stay as our HQ; the warehouse in Old Street, Coastguards and St John and then the others are long term rentals to live in. The name became DOM Stay & Live and then DOMstay. Voytek, being a pro photographer, photographed everything, and we built our website. Friends and other design led businesses asked if we would list their property on the site.
Now DOMstay is a collection of properties that have a like-minded story attached to them. The owner has refurbished and redesigned it, or an architect has redesigned it. A whole community of people share their homes; they live part of the year there and then move around. Very Mapp and
Lucia in fact!
I get so attached; these houses feel like part of my family; I’ve never been able to part with any of them, and they’re all part of my story, the narrative and all different phases of our lives. Unlike my childhood, my parents lost their homes in Poland, so I could never see where they grew up or have that historical connection. In a way, I guess I’m creating this history, and I’m unable to let go.
“I’ve been doing wild swimming all year round, it gets under my skin, and I miss it so much if there is a gap in time where I can’t do it. I need to get back; I need to swim. It is such a buzz to do cold water swimming. So I’m enjoying spending more time here.”
Tell me more about the Coastguards Cottage?
Marta. Coastguards is an original coastguard cottage. It’s got all the original features and proportions; amazingly, it survived. It is as original as possible, now with a development twist that has modernised and given an extra unique dimension to the house. We’ve got the kitchen and dining room together, quite a modernist space. The entrance is at the back; there is no door in the front; that’s how it has always been.
Now you arrive, and it is unexpected. You don’t quite know what is going to happen. You walk through this modern extension and then through the old rear of the house into an utterly original building. It is dovetailing the new with the old, a little moment of time travel.
As you move up in the house, the sea views get larger.
We have planning permission to build a little studio, so that’s what’s next; I always like to have a project in planning. Then, somewhere I can come to work during the day, my own studio space. In lockdown, I noticed everybody sitting and working at the kitchen table. Which sounds lovely, but I started to think it would be a dream to have my little studio I could escape to and close the door.
“I designed everything from the inside out and then worked on the elevations to work with the interior.”
Marta Nowicka - DOMstay
St John - Rye + Coastguards Cottage - Camber
marta@domstayandlive.com
www.domstay.com
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