Anthology

Belgian artist and surrealist René Magritte often took everyday, familiar objects and placed them in unexpected scenes, posing questions as to where the boundaries lie between what is real and what is representation.

Antonino Cardillo (from Trapani) does not mention Wittgenstein in his latest project. […] However, the residential house he has built for a family of three, with its angular and austere appearance, still evokes thoughts of the house in Vienna.

To narrate his latest work, […] the architect Antonino Cardillo begins with the fog that thickens over the lake’s surface, gently blurring the contours of objects.

Italian architect Antonino Cardillo has completed a house near Lake Garda featuring steep ceilings, arched doorways and a palette of textured plaster and marble.

We are not prepared to read the plans of the one who implements the future. This is the case of the architect Antonino Cardillo, a great eclectic.

This is postmodern in spirit, but above all adapted to the fascinating experience for which his spaces are repeatedly conceived. The designs are characterised—both in form and in use—by a sense of the ephemeral and the enigmatic, almost a reflection of his subtle formal language.

The Sicilian architect Antonino Cardillo has been able, with his cutting-edge, almost archetypical work, to engage with centuries-old cultures and civilisations.

These hieratic forms create an atmosphere of slightly menacing mystery—one could expect a Mithraic rite to begin at any moment.

Besides famous ancient temples, Norman cathedrals, and Baroque palaces, they discovered modern architectural marvels [in Sicily], such as Antonino Cardillo’s Specus Corallii in Trapani […]

We cannot decide whether Specus Corallii looks more like emerging from the depths of the ocean or whether it is the image of the ocean itself which on the distant horizon coincides with the sky as if they are reaching their love-making peak.

Inspired by Swiss Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, he is constantly reaching out for the ‘architecture of the unconscious’.

This is a strong reference to the archetype, one which is considered as the need to return to the origin of things.

This is the most beautiful restaurant in Rome.

The Sicilian architect Antonino Cardillo just unveiled his latest masterpiece, the Off Club in Rome.

A dark paradise of shadows, mirrors and symmetries.

A long-time Wallpaper* collaborator, Antonino Cardillo’s latest work marks a defining moment for the Sicilian architect.

This space evokes love and loss, nostalgia, melancholy, and life’s most essential inaudible philosophies. Most importantly, this long dark cave can certainly be trusted.

The spaces he has designed make clear the endless distance that separates them from what they evoke—while the measurement of distance is the most proper meaning of the evocation.

Sicily is a magical and wonderful place, where there are mafia, beautiful legends, large olive groves and sunshine scattered on towns and beaches. And… my favourite Italian architect, Antonino Cardillo?

Antonino Cardillo challenges the very norms of the architectural process as we have popularly come to know it.

The wooden inlay in the oratory floor, […] represents the final destination in the journey and expresses the peaceful stability of a safe haven.

Antonino Cardillo has dedicated himself to a form of architecture with centuries-old tradition: the artificial grotto, which he translates into contemporary forms. Manifestations of his poetic spaces exist in London and Rome. The latest was created in Sicily.

Trapani has recently earned a new pearl for its historic centre. In 2016 the work of restoration and total architectural re-design of a very old and historic building located in Via Generale Domenico Giglio, 12, a stone’s throw from the Cathedral of S. Lorenzo Martire.

Antonino Cardillo masters the art of telling stories through spaces and materials: visitors disappear into a mysterious passage that conjures up hidden underwater worlds. At the same time, these are familiar images and known forms. The world remains a labyrinth of memories, the architect is a time traveller—and architecture becomes ecstasy.

At the back, a niche like a mihrab: “in the idea of architecture as a sacred and universal dimension”.

Italian architect Antonino Cardillo has coated the walls of a vaulted chamber-music and events space in lumpy coral-pink, grey and green plasterwork.

The roughness of pozzolana, used for millennia as a coating, cancels, with its chiaroscuro effects due to the particular technique of roughcast application, the separation of the joining angles between the roof and the walls, evoking the airy quality of a vault that the sacred place must have once possessed.

My youth was populated with symbols which came from an ancient past. My imagination was also moulded by the desires of people that inhabited the island long time ago.

Any act of beauty is a shard of love en route for a stranger.

His understanding of space and balance has resulted in some of the most influential interiors of recent times.

Successful architect, Antonino Cardillo has confirmed his place in contemporary design history with, among other things, a series of avant-garde aesthetic projects.

Cardillo is the guy behind one of our favorite interiors projects in recent memory, the House of Dust.

Antonino Cardillo looked to the colours and textures used in the opening scene of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold opera.

This architectural work, however unexpected, reflects a certain dualism where the ordered shapes of the container collide with the imperfections of the contents.

I regard my work as an inquiry into forgotten significances of the past, akin to a codex primarily based on notions of protection and eroticism. […] Consequently, these archetypes continue to inhabit our subconscious, admonishing us that there is more than the commonplace visions imposed by society.

He is the most radical architect in my selection. It creates tension and a strong atmosphere. He has a sharp notion of interior design.

A new author who has carved out a place entirely his own in the history of this discipline within just a few years.

Somewhere on Dover Street, […] there lies a fairy tale grotto filled with tranquillity and calm.

Perfumery Illuminum in London welcomes its customers in a shop that breaks with all the buying and viewing habits of the luxury class.

Egyptian? Greek? Roman? It doesn’t really matter, because once these ancestral images are deposited in our unconscious they are emptied of their historical specificity.

Visitors can remove the cork stoppers to sample the fragrances, and in an environment stripped of colour, graphics, names, ingredients, the scents are able to capture their full attention, the essences being perceived purely intuitively.

Italian architect Antonino Cardillo has created a multi-sensory space for experiencing and buying fragrance by coating a room inside an old London building with volcanic ash.

The most amazing space in London in a while. It is not brutalist but beautiful and poetic.

Cardillo links shadows and mysteries to the creation of a sense of eroticism.

A dimension seemingly out of time, which here seems to have stopped or never spent, suspended, immobile.

With its rather modest 40 square metres, Cardillo has transformed the gallery into a sacred space, providing a bold contrast to the eternal White Cube.

Antonino Cardillo focusses on the potential of the ceiling.

Fashion photographer Nacho Alegre’s highlights include a number of characterful residential projects, such as Antonino Cardillo’s House of Dust in Rome.

It instantly brought back memories of the best postmodern, neoclassical architecture that I was revisiting at the time—Bofill, Moneo, Tusquets—but with a more personal and very contemporary view.

Cardillo breaks boundaries, shatters familiar templates, and pours a unique individual character into his works with a new language based on classical principles. All this being said, it is quite clear that this new aesthetic language is not easy to digest and understand and is not intended for everyone; it is very far from the mainstream, deep, different and other, as pioneering works tend to be.

It is purposely reminiscent of all kinds of subliminal historical references, in particular the vault of very early architecture.

The architect has managed to create a flat with solid materials […] that processes the history of architecture and the very particular history of the city of Rome in its own unique way.

Cardillo’s architecture promotes the sensorial mobilisation envisioned by Benjamin as a potential force for social / political transformation.

Doing a house up entirely in earth tones would be pretty ill-advised 99 percent of the time, but in the right hands the effect can be nothing short of arresting.

In place of abundant natural light and designer furnishings are gloomy cavernous spaces characterised by a grainy ceiling of pozzolanic plaster, tinted the colour of dust.

The Sicilian architect uses colour to illustrate the path of humanity: “from the grotto to the rose” as the maximum expression of the sublime.

An apartment interior in Rome’s Via Veneto, glamorised by Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the House of Dust serves as an ideal springboard for fanciful lighting effects and architectural narrative.

This is a courageous project with a fresh aesthetic and a unique vision. It’s the kind of interior that creates new trends, memes and movements.

Architecture exists to build bridges between contradictions.

As one of the world’s most exciting architects, Antonino Cardillo draws on classical and ancient architectural forms to create spaces that feel entirely new.

For the architect, architecture becomes interesting where it “becomes invisible or hides something” and exists on the border “to the dream”—with his House of Dust he has precisely realised this into reality.

Italian architect Antonino Cardillo used roughly textured plaster to create lumpy brown surfaces across the upper walls and ceilings of this apartment in Rome.

A side entrance reveals a hall that, like a Greek mask suddenly worn by the visitor, projects and draws attention onto two tapered windows: a pair of eyes on the world.

Art is a lie.

Apart from the involuntary irony that Der Spiegel appears in both impostor stories, once as a prosecutor and once as an accused, they differ fundamentally.

Cardillo has created a labyrinth of truths and illusions. It is a novella with multiple layers. […] There is no one truth—reality: it doesn’t exist. Antonino Cardillo has built it.

Neglected, however, is the question of why Cardillo’s images, which can be easily recognised as renderings, were preferred over photographs or even perceived as photographs.

In fact, Cardillo is essentially right in claiming that images of unrealised and utopian architectures can become an integral part of architectural history and significantly influence it. The difference with Cardillo, however, lies in the important fact that these utopias are also declared as such.

I am nothing and I shall ever be nothing. I cannot want to be anything. But I have in me all the dreams in the world.

Cardillo, who meticulously lists all these press reports on his website, only holds up a mirror to architectural media and points out a fundamental problem: How can young architects find clients without having been published?

How do we construct our reality from the material and the imaginary through the media today and what are the consequences? […] If the case of Cardillo now serves to at least seriously discuss one of these questions again, he may have done more for the architectural discourse than those who think they have always known the answer.

Incidentally, architecture has always been ephemeral and virtual, he explains. From Palladio to Schinkel, from Sant’Elia to Mies van der Rohe, architects influenced architectural development and changed reality with ideas in the form of surrogates.

When Felix Krull was young, he pondered for a long time whether he should view the world as small or large. According to his “nature”, he later in life “considered the world to be a great and infinitely alluring phenomenon”. He became the happiest impostor in literary history.

An email inquiry pointing out that the architectural photos depicted or submitted are not photos but renderings, receives the terse response: “I am an artist and as an artist I manipulate reality! That’s it!”

You have been a champion in our works and pushing the limits.

A marriage of the sacred and profane, the design was intended both to augment and disrupt the reverence with which fashion products are presented and viewed in shops.

There is fear within us, and that which we don’t accept in others is often a reflection of our character.

To complement the V&A’s keynote exhibition ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–90’, the LDF invites you to the specially commissioned Postmodern Cafe, designed by architect Antonino Cardillo.

In the realization phase, a process of sign distillation and method systematization occurs, making the language clearer and stronger.

Wallpaper* and luxury footwear brand Sergio Rossi stepped up the fashion game during the Salone del Mobile by launching an ephemeral men’s shoe boutique in Milan, designed by acclaimed Sicilian architect Antonino Cardillo.

Although the trend of ephemeral boutiques may leave one perplexed, the Sergio Rossi pop-up store (19 via Ponte Vetero), on the sidelines of the Salone del Mobile, aims to unveil new local design talents.

Cardillo is one of the most significant architects of our time.

Rather than simply report on the newest firms to flash onto our radar, Wallpaper* has commissioned 30 of the finest young architects to design their ideal home.

Cardillo’s architectural masses are immense, as if hailing from distant lands and ancient civilisations, beautiful yet rebellious, generous, and fervent, with a profound and stirring rhythm.

I reluctantly concede, that not only is Antonino’s strong architectural statement ‘complete’ without art, but that art may actually detract from its ‘look.’

Romance with space works when the architect locates and positions his thoughts not merely in the physical, but emotional, cultural and social space as well.

I prefer the architects of the past. The current ones, except for some, are only business and marketing.

Inspiration from Roman architecture, whether due to its monolithic nature or rounded shapes, is evident in the construction.

My works are often portraits of the people I have loved.

Why Rome? Perhaps for voluntary exile. To create I need silence and distance.

Traditional Andalusian Flamenco has inspired many artists: Federico García Lorca with his poetry, Pablo Picasso with his paintings and sculptures, and the young Italian architect Antonino Cardillo with a house.

Whoever says that Australia lacks culture hasn’t met the client who commissioned this exemplary home.

So, if Homer had his Iliad and Odyssey, Rome based architect Antonino Cardillo has the homes he builds across the globe, interpreting his clients’ “most hidden and irrational wishes”.

These houses are like planetary observation stations, constantly recording the changes in the weather on their walls.

The first to admit to being a dreamer, Cardillo concedes to inhabiting a virtual world, a parallel universe, moreover describing his fall into architecture as a chance happening.

According to the Almanac of Architecture & Design, these are some of the world’s top new architectural wonders.

Having the courage to discover ourselves through others.

It happened a late afternoon, ⁠I was seventeen years old. Seeing a small construction for electricity in the countryside, I thought about how nice it would be to live on top of a tower. The next day I bought an architecture dictionary and spent the summer reading it, as is done with a book that tells of distant countries.

The play of light within the convex walls of this house create a romantic aura that envelopes visitors and transports them into a world of wonder at the inspired superiority that made this beautifully shaped structure possible.

We’d all like a bit more space around the house. We’re not talking Changing Rooms-style wall hangings and naff trompe l’oeil—we mean golf club-swinging, echo-inducing caverns that make you wish you’d mastered acrobatic gymnastics whenever you walk into them.

In a profession full of flamboyant empresarios, meet Italian architect Antonino Cardillo. Which is not to say, however, that his creations are not flamboyant. You can eulogise, criticise or analyse them, but you certainly can’t ignore them .

His homes are more nearly temple than dwelling, and they reward aesthetic contemplation before they fulfil domestic necessity.

Passing time leaves the interiors unchanged, creating only a temporary spectacle during which the play of colours and light becomes a space in itself.

Hardly having stepped in the spacious cool rooms of the buildings designed by him, it catches and takes you on an extraordinary journey.

Magnetising the eye from the very moment you view the enormous sweeping curves in the living room, the architecture appears to be the harbinger of an epochal change in Italy’s post imperial design history.

It functions as observatory. It makes slides of the moon. It considers the Earth’s place in the universe.

This new house designed by Antonino Cardillo has stumped us good and proper.