Who We Are

Following over thirty years in investments (corporate, private equity and entrepreneurial in commercial real estate) and having fulfilled my role as a father I decided to focus my energy and time on an area that spoke to me for a long time, namely revitalisation of old apartments and buildings. Of course I don’t do it alone. I work with and ad-hoc team who gets together on a project-by-project basis, in a way not dissimilar to the filmmaking crews. All the people invited to join have one characteristic in common - they are proud to deliver a high quality work. In line with the filmmaking metaphor all the Cast & Crew is named below the photographs from each project.

Skolimów, February 26th, 2020

J.W. - The mind and heart behind Crafted By Time™

What’s Important

I regard with extreme repugnance the throw-away culture of today, driven by the manufacturers who produce goods with built-in obsolescence.  Still a few decades back, people were proud to make things that lasted and to make them beautiful at the same time.  I take photographs with cameras that are sixty and eighty years old, and I am certain that my grandchildren will be able take photographs with those wonders of engineering enjoying their quality, beauty and the tactile experience that goes with them.

I look for similar qualities in an apartment.  I enjoy good architecture and I have a preference for old artisans, their craftsmanship and the effect of time on their work.  But good architecture and craftsmanship is not all.  I like to buy apartments from people who cared about them, who had their family history in them and who would like them to be cherished after they, or their loved ones are gone.  Tearing things down or throwing them away to put in new is often wrong in my view.  I like to create new using old.  It’s better for the environment and for the people who live there too.

What we do is the opposite of the ready to wear, ready to eat, ready to throw away industrial approach of today.  We save, restore and revitalise.  I am excited to buy a forgotten or tired apartment and give it a new life.  Sometimes, when it comes out particularly well it’s hard for me to sell, but in the end I do, as first and foremost I want to put those homes in caring hands and continue my mission on new projects.

So, what am I looking for when I buy and restore an apartment?  What am I focusing on?  Firstly, when I decide to buy an apartment, it’s not because it is superficially beautiful, but it has a spirit that attracts me to it.  The spirit of the place is more important to me than superficial beauty, and that often comes with old elements – floors, doors, windows, brasses, light, energy. 

I need to feel good energy, as living in my view is much more about feeling than about seeing.  The first house I built together with architect Tomasz Maliszewski is like that – humble on the outside and with a phenomenal energy inside.  My home is almost a laboratory, where since 1996 I experiment with different approaches, colour schemes, walking paths and textures, informing myself what works and what doesn’t.  From that trial and error, I learned what makes the space work.  People who come here feel well, the place puts them at ease, and that’s what I want to give the ones who buy apartments from me.  I want them to be happy in those homes, because homes are the centres of our little universes.

Apart from certain spirit and good energy, light is also very important.  How it enters the rooms, bounces off the walls, brings out details, draws with shadows.

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Do we only preserve and restore?  No, sometimes we have to fix the ills of the old apartments to give them today’s comfort.  But the way we do it is with the greatest respect to their souls and character.  Similarly, to what is done with old movies or recordings we remaster them.  We take an apartment that is full of character, but maybe not the best in the world in terms of functionality and turn it into an apartment you will want to live in.  Yes, we sometimes (rarely) change the old layout to make it more adapted to today’s lifestyle, but we always try doing it in such a way, that it looks as if it was that way for decades.

Sometimes we change the layout in order to enhance the sense of space, which is another important attribute that I like to preserve or create.  How we renovate the interior influences the internal sense of space, but like in a Japanese garden we also like to borrow the views from the outside, and thus they must be present, not another wall of windows a few meters away.

Bringing the sense of space, particularly in a smaller apartment is part of getting the place right.  The proportions and the scale must be such that people feel great in these rooms.  It’s particularly important when we decide which spaces to combine and how, and which areas to enclose.  

Let’s now talk about comfort.  When the home is pretty, but not comfortable, it’s a failure.  We give a lot of thought to how people will move around the place, how they will get in and out of bed, where will be the paths they are likely to walk most often.  And because of that attention to comfort we refuse to squeeze bedrooms into narrow former kitchens forcing people to climb to bed from the end.  For heaven’s sake, it’s an apartment, not a tent!  

Aged textures of natural materials are something that is of utmost importance.  It gives a sense of continuity, stability, grounding.  Thus, we spend a large portion of the revitalisation budget on bringing out the best from those old materials.  We do not try to make them look like new, but to make them clean, while preserving the patina and character of something that was crafted by time.

Buying an apartment with history, one that is likely to survive the new owner, maybe passed onto the next generation is a spiritual experience.  Touching a pre-WW II wooden windowsill that bears traces of the passage of time is an amazing tactile experience.  I have a lot of respect for craftsmanship, particularly that of the greatest craftsman of all – time. 

The apartments we offer are not luxurious, they are simple and liveable.  But as many greats of West and East have said before me: “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

All those elements will affect the person who chooses to live in one of our apartments, so in a way we help creating a better quality of life, and that brings me immense joy.

Had those apartments have fallen into the wrong hands they would be stripped of all character and ornamentation, their wooden floors would be replaced with plasticky fake panels, then castrated, sterilised, chopped into as many rooms as there are windows - sometimes more - and rented out for the highest yield. Personally, I would not chop an apartment with great energy to small rooms just to maximise the rental income. That would have broken my heart.  There is more to value we create than just the monetary aspect.  Giving those apartments another lease of life makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

The process of revitalising and renovating an old building or apartment is a bit like cooking.  There are some rules and guidelines, but ultimately, it’s about taste and aesthetic sensitivity.  In case of what we offer, I am the one to blame.

The gratification of saving something, restoring it and then passing it to someone who will appreciate it, feel well there, and who over the years will fill the place with her or his happy memories is immense.  That’s why finding the right buyer or tenant is so important.  One who cares.

JW

Our Inspirations

All will come in good time :)