Summer Houses at the End of the Village

architect Zoran Bodrožić
project Two Vacation Houses, Krug near Buje, Istria, Croatia
written by Vera Grimmer

 

What is the secret of the Istrian landscape, especially in the north-western interior of the peninsula, what makes it such a desirable Arcadia? Why does a citizen of Vicenza or Milan, Vienna or Munich, Berlin or Hamburg, London or Glasgow look for a bucolic haven here? The answer may be found in the harmonious balance of the natural and the artificial. It is about a cultural landscape where dry walls support terraces with olive trees or vineyards, where stone settlements are largely picturesquely, but also rationally situated into a slightly hilly landscape. Here, in the valleys there are still stone fountains – šterna, and groups of cypresses and chapels with bell towers on the tops of the hills will tell us in Loos’s sense – here lies someone buried.