House Whisperer — The Kuća project of the Croatian designer Boris Kajmak

With this intri­guing mountain land­scape as a backdrop, hidden on the shores of a remote fjord with emerald green shim­mering water, lies Novigrad: a pic­turesque Dal­matian town of 542 souls, known for its fish and shell fishing and actually for not being par­ti­cu­larly famous. The road that leads to Novigrad ends here and whoever comes here does so for the sake of the place. You can see that: Novigrad is not a place of mass tourism; it cle­verly hides from the crowds and pro­tects its tranquil life within the old city walls. At its highest point, the imposing For­tezza towers above the town. Novigrad has a charm that cannot be ignored. It reads like a history book about the older and recent history of the region. Like a time tra­veller, you jump forward or backward on the timeline of events, depending on which lane you turn into, which door you slip through or which steps you climb. Along the pro­menade, small stone cot­tages crouch down next to dila­pi­dated man­sions. Many facades still show the traces of the war in the 90s, which hit the fishing town hard: most of the buil­dings were damaged and plun­dered during and after the occu­pation. Those who returned here after the war only needed one thing: to restore normal life as quickly as pos­sible, which prompted many inha­bi­tants to make makeshift repairs, which were not neces­s­arily focused on aes­thetics and attention to the local building history. Thus, the town­scape deve­loped into an intri­guing patchwork of old stone houses and strange new archi­tecture.

From Sep­tember to April Novigrad dozes peacefully and only the winds – the hot Sci­rocco coming from the south and the ice-cold Bora – blow sweep through it from time to time. To those who witness these Dal­matian winds, a piece of the soul of this region is revealed. During the warm months Novigrad radiates a lively Croatian way of life, when the city dwellers visit their rela­tives in the summer resort. The foreign tra­vellers who come to Novigrad are looking for the authentic corners of Croatia and for encounters with people who are able to feel the special aura of their homeland. Boris Kajmak is such a person.

Born and raised in 1980 in Zadar, Croatia, his pro­fession and calling took him around the globe. He studied print­making and art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mostar and London. He defines himself as an “inter­di­sci­plinary artist and designer whose works explore social realms through material, play and lan­guage.” His sculp­tures, design objects and archi­tec­tural works have been shown in inter­na­tional exhi­bi­tions since 1999.

His expe­rience of war at a young age has been reflected in many ways and has become a powerful catalyst. Boris Kajmak is a cul­tural nomad, a border crosser, a lateral thinker, a clever observer full of wit and (self-)irony. Most per­cep­tible is his insa­tiable urge for movement, deve­lo­pment and inspiring exchange. And then there is – omni­present – love, an uncon­di­tional, loyal yet cri­tical love for the people and places that harbour his roots and childhood memories: the intri­guing coastal town of Zadar and … Novigrad.

Since 2011, he has been com­muting between the hectic hustle and bustle of his adopted city of Berlin (curr­ently Rome) and the con­tem­plative tran­quillity of the small town on the fjord, driven by a visionary reno­vation project that began with an old house inhe­rited from his uncle and has mean­while spread far and wide: the Kuća project.

House No.1: Kuća Kamena. The Stone House.

What do you do with a dila­pi­dated old building in the middle of a remote, unknown town that is still busy regaining its identity after the decisive war inter­mezzo? Roll up your sleeves, face the (bureau­cratic) headwind and enable a house to be built stone by stone that is intended to accom­modate a very special target group of holiday guests. Far away from the masses, very close to the essence of this place.

The reno­vation of the Dal­matian stone house from the 16th century took place under the strict regu­la­tions for old buil­dings in the old town of Novigrad. The highest premise was to pre­serve all ele­ments of the Dal­matian archi­tecture. Thus, tra­di­tional tech­niques and local mate­rials, mostly from the old stock, were used. The artistic approach defined the archi­tecture and its con­tem­porary design inter­ven­tions. Irre­gu­la­rities in the ori­ginal structure were not eli­mi­nated, but accen­tuated. Boris Kajmak paid par­ti­cular attention to the sounds, smells and shapes that per­meate the old stone house. “By pre­serving these imma­terial ele­ments of archi­tecture, I have suc­ceeded in pre­serving some of my most lasting childhood memories.”

House No. 2: Kuća Pho­to­grapher — The Photographer’s House

Between the 1st and 2nd World War, the Novigrad pho­to­grapher, Nikica Karavida lived here with his wife Zorka. Boris bought the badly damaged house and dedi­cated it the­ma­ti­cally to the creative work of its pre­vious owner. The kuća is both intro­verted and com­mu­ni­cative: inside, the intimate nest, while the pergola terrace opens up to the sur­rounding houses and becomes a neigh­bourly meeting place.

Boris Kajmak is a house whisperer. Or rather, a kuća whisperer.
As if he had his own antennas for it, he per­ceives the dila­pi­dated stone houses with all his senses.
He listens to their sounds, feels their sur­faces and explores their structure. With the accuracy and almost childlike enthu­siasm of an archaeo­logist, he reveals the history of the old walls layer by layer. He digs, scratches and hollows out. He rese­arches, dis­cusses, scans and draws. He opens doors, finds tre­asures and con­jures up traces and objects of a time thought to be lost forever. The rooms of the past and their inha­bi­tants come to life as if one had landed in a black-and-white film. From all this new archi­tec­tural and design con­cepts of the stone houses emerge, houses which take their hat off to the past and yet are made tho­roughly for the present.

Dream team

In the beginning, the Kuća project was a one-man-show; mean­while Boris Kajmak has involved a small group of good friends: an inter­na­tional, inter­di­sci­plinary team of people who couldn’t be more dif­ferent but whose talents com­plement each other per­fectly. What they all have in common: “For all of them it’s about creating some­thing tog­ether and they all love to get their hands dirty!” If you watch the boys at work, you quickly notice that an unbeatable dream team has come tog­ether here:

Jadran Anzu­lović: The Guardian of Novigrad
“No one else is more closely inter­woven with the history of this place, he lite­rally knows every stone of Novigrad. He is an art his­torian without a diploma but with an impressive know­ledge. Offi­cially he is the cul­tural repre­sen­tative for Novigrad and runs the local museum. He is also my cousin by the way … What else can I say about a guy who collects stories about ever­y­thing in this little town and spends his nights faithfully drawing repro­duc­tions of old fire­places? Of course he owns a vineyard and makes wine, but he doesn’t drink alcohol.”

Joško Dujić: Macho Man and sup­porting Pillar
“Joško is a former pro­fes­sional handball player and trained building craftsman. He also started training as a civil engineer but two cir­cum­s­tances ruined this plan: his woma­nizing and the war. We agree on ever­y­thing, but he would never admit that. Without him the whole project would be unthinkable, it is based on his gran­diose know­ledge and skills in con­s­truction. My past as an artist and the know­ledge I stole from Joško and Jadran are con­nected in me. It’s pretty cool to see the two guys respect each other. Two true old school­masters!”

Tim Stol­zenburg: Master of Design
“He is a great designer. We studied at the same college in London at the same time without knowing each other. I studied fine arts, he did product design. Tim loves to come to Novigrad in winter to carry around bricks and stones, but above all he develops the design concept of the stone houses tog­ether with me. His archi­tec­tural expe­rience is a great enrichment for my initial ideas and his influence is really decisive. He rounds off my ideas per­fectly.”

House No. 3: Kuća Plavca  The Boat­house

The archi­tec­tural and the­matic concept of the third stone house — located just a few metres from the pro­menade on the canal – focuses on an exis­tential object for the inha­bi­tants of Novigrad: the boat.
At the Kuća Plavca, the tra­di­tional sym­biosis of humans and water is deve­loped in a con­tem­porary manner and thus dif­ferent handmade kayaks will belong to the standard inventory of the house, which is pre­sently under con­s­truction. Guests in the future can look forward to paddling through the emerald green waters of the Novigrad Sea and to enjoying the spec­ta­cular land­scape from a com­pletely new per­spective.

New member of the Kaj(m)ak team is the Berlin boat builder Lutz Berger. “A phe­no­menal guy who really has some­thing to say. He studied phi­lo­sophy and poli­tical science but his vocation is to help people build their own boats.” Lutz Berger is the driving force behind the Berlin company Berger-Boote. What began in a narrow backyard in 2010 has in recent years estab­lished itself as a renowned manu­factory of boat­building kits. With Boris Kajmak, Lutz Berger shares a passion for high-quality craft­smanship, water, nature and the view of the world from a boat. His work­shops on the subject of boat building have met with an enthu­si­astic response, even if he doesn’t really like to talk. Still waters are deep.

“To be able to maximise pro­tection of the ori­ginal structure and to generate a tech­ni­cally solid con­nection between old and new ele­ments, I had to use a bit more than a tape mea­surer. Mea­suring irre­gular space where ori­ginal builders aimed but not neces­s­arily gained straight lines and the right angles in any direction, is never an easy task. For getting an idea of the size, surface or volume, the direc­tions of light, heights and thic­k­nesses, manual methods are still fine if one gives effort.
However, building a complex multi storey steel structure that should have a snug fit with uneven stone walls asked for some con­tem­porary tools. This is why we’ve done a 3D laser scanning of the house as soon as we’ve stripped the walls down to a bare stone. Doing this, we were pro­vided with a 3D mesh that cor­re­sponds per­fectly to the actual situation in the house, with every stone being visible on the com­puter model. This way we could adjust “steel structure to be” accor­dingly to every bump, of the ori­ginal structure with cer­tainty nothing will be in its way.
The simple ren­dering of the steel structure shows the layout with its seven plat­forms made of H‑beams, and the stairs con­necting those made of per­fo­rated steel sheets. Alt­hough more details are sub­jects of change, the general layout is now deter­mined.”

3 houses, each with its very own atmo­sphere, design concept and indi­vidual focus. The common deno­mi­nator of the three kuće obviously lies in the balance between Novigrad’s tra­di­tional heritage and a con­tem­porary, mini­malist aes­thetic. But Boris Kajmak’s stone houses are also con­nected by an invi­sible red thread: of his love for a place and its people, stones, stories, fates and destinies. Of his love for water, but above all for the grey stone giants that emerge on the horizon. “Actually, I want people to come to Novigrad because of these moun­tains, but the sea is one step ahead in tourism mar­keting,” says Boris, not turning his gaze away from the sil­houette of Velebit. “It is here that the soul of this region lies and here that you can really meet it.”

Also house Nr. 4 is already in the making. This time (and for the first time) Boris Kajmak & Team are res­toring for third parties, clients from Munich who have fallen in love with the Kuća project and the Kajmak style. Because the facade of the aban­doned tower house is curr­ently deco­rated with a striking sixties-style render, Boris’ little daughter has already pre-chris­tened it: Kuća Lila.