These works explore the idea of a sacred universe, where cultures and civilisations, ancient and recent, come together in singularities that tell of how the Psyche has diversified and projected its contents in the different eras and different places of the world.
Dessauer Gespräche, Dessau Institute of Architecture, Nov. 2019. (en, it)
Inside, short corridors hide rather than reveal. The second passage, to the left, reveals the architecture in its deeper nature, not pertaining to magnitude but to proportion.
Casabella, no. 895, Milan, March 2019, p. 32. (en, it, ja)
History teaches that, often, characters and important works are recognised by historiography only after many decades and, on the other hand, not always works that gain consensus in the immediate, appear relevant in a historical perspective.
Il Giornale dell’Architettura, no. 53, Turin, July 2007, p. 18. (it)
The history of man has developed through continuous interaction between different cultures. It often happens that the dominant take possession of the submissive, managing to disguise the process by rewriting history.
Blueprint, no. 256, London, July 2007, p. 58. (en)
From East to West, these places are apparently marginal, and despite their natural contradictions, they tell how Barcelona has courageously founded its rebirth on a contemporary architecture project.
Ulisse, no. 271, Alitalia, Rome, March 2007, p. 22. (en, it)
Interviews
2017–2009
Architect’s Q&A interviews (interview articles in the ‘On the architect’ section)
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.
Odda, no. 11, ed. Zurain Imam, New York, Sept. 2016, p. 427. (en)
The sacrifice of just one is better than the corruption of the many. It was valid for Piranesi, it was valid for Sottsass when he went into the desert, and it is valid for me.
Opere, no. 32, ed. Stefano Mirti and Gioia Guerzoni, Florence, Oct. 2012, p. 54. (en, it)
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.
demaniore.com, ed. Luca De Giuseppe, Il Sole 24 Ore Casa, Milan, Jan. 2009. (it)
On the architect
Evocation
2021–2015
Writings by other authors mainly related to the architectural projects Specus Corallii and Off Club
The Sicilian architect Antonino Cardillo has been able, with his cutting-edge, almost archetypical work, to engage with centuries-old cultures and civilisations.
In Sicily, in addition to ancient temples, Norman cathedrals and baroque palaces, exciting examples of modern architecture can now be admired, such as Antonino Cardillo’s Specus Corallii in Trapani.
Sizilien, DuMont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern, 5 Sept. 2019, media release. (de)
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.
‘Specus Corallii’, in Architecture and Eroticism. An Imaginary Wandering, thesis, Tutor Apostolos Kalfopoulos, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, June 2019, pp. 80‑117. (el, en)
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.
[email], ed. Matt Edwards, San Luis Obispo, 29 March 2018. (en)
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.
Casabella, no. 879, Milan, Nov. 2017, p. 30. (en, it)
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, Antonio Cardillo?
Antonino Cardillo is dedicated to a design with centuries of tradition: the artificial grotto, which he translates into contemporary forms. Offshoots of his poetic spaces exist in London and Rome. The latest was now created in Sicily.
AD Architectural Digest, no. 178, Munich, Apr. 2017, p. 163. (de)
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.
Strenna d’Agosto 2016, La Ragnatela, Rome, March 2017, pp. 305‑307. (it)
Antonino Cardillo masters the art of telling stories through spaces and materials: the world remains a labyrinth of memories, the architect is a time traveller — and architecture becomes stupefaction.
The scabrosity of the pozzolana, used for millennia as a coating, cancels, with its chiaroscuro effects due to the particular technique of rinzaffo, the detachment of the corners of conjunction between the roof and the walls, evoking the aerial quality of the sacred place once had to possess.
This architectural work, however unexpected, reflects a certain dualism where the ordered shapes of the container collide with the imperfections of the contents.
Successful architect, Antonino Cardillo has confirmed his place in contemporary design history with, among other things, a series of avant-garde aesthetic projects.
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.
Design Exchange, no. 12, London, Aug. 2015, p. 109. (en)
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.
With 40 square metres rather manageable, the architect has transformed the gallery into a sacred space — and created a courageous change from the eternal white cube.
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 patterns and infuses his works with a unique individual character with a new language based on classical principles. However, 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 different, in the way of groundbreaking works.
Trend, no. 141, Tel Aviv, March 2014, p. 180. (he)
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 characterized by a grainy ceiling of pozzolanic plaster, tinted the colour of dust.
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.
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 exciting at the point where it becomes “invisible or hides something” and exists on the border “to the dream” — he has realised exactly that into reality with his house made of dust.
designlines.de, BauNetz, Berlin, 13 Aug. 2013. (de)
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.
Casamica, no. 3/13, Corriere della Sera, Milan, June 2013, p. 77. (it)
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.
After the representations were revealed as desired pictures, he replied: “Just see it like a literary narrative, […] a fairy tale. It is also not important that things actually happened.”
Paper presented to the Wunsch, Technische Hochschule Köln, Cologne, 1 June 2016. (de)
In fact, Cardillo is right here at its core, because as this essay also wanted to show, images of unrealised and utopian architectures can become an integral part of architectural history and not insignificantly influence it.
iacsa.eu, vol. 4, no. 1, Basel, May 2013, p. 11. (de)
Cardillo, who meticulously lists all these press reports on his website, only holds up the mirror to the architectural media and refers to a fundamental problem: How should young architects get to a builder without having published beforehand?
Or how we are constructing our reality from the material and the imaginary through the media today and what consequences this has. No simple questions, really. If the Cardillo case now served to seriously discuss at least one of these questions again, it might have done more for the architectural discourse than those who think they always have the answer to them.
german-architects.com, Stuttgart, 29 July 2012. (de)
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.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, no. 164, Zurich, 17 July 2012, p. 40. (de)
When Felix Krull was young, he thought for a long time about whether he should see the world small or big. According to his ‘nature’, he then respected the world for a great and infinitely tempting appearance in his later life. He became the happiest impostor in literary history.
Der Spiegel, no. 27/12, Hamburg, 2 July 2012, p. 121. (de, it)
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.
Fashion photographer Nacho Alegre's highlights include a number of characterful residential projects, such as Antonino Cardillo's House of Dust in Rome.
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.
The London Design Festival 2011, London, Sept. 2011, p. 183. (en)
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.
Art / Fashion in 21st Century, Thames & Hudson, London, Oct. 2013, pp. 252, 254‑257. (en)
In the implementation phase there is a process of decanting of signs and a systematisation of the method so effective that the language appears to be clarified and strengthened.
L’Architetto Italiano, no. 42, Rome, Apr. 2011, p. 31. (it)
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.
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.
Wallpaper*, no. 125, London, Aug. 2009, p. 78. (en)
Remote places
2021–2007
Writings by other authors related to the series of architectural projects Seven Houses for No One
Differently from the [William Morris’] Red House in London which represents the search for a national British identity, Purple House tries to recall the forgotten routes between Mediterranean and Britain shorelines.
Inside Outside, no. 315, Mumbai, Sept. 2011, pp. 147‑148. (en)
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.
Surfaces Reporter, New Delhi, June 2011, pp. 36‑41. (en)
“In contemporary architecture, a lack of idea is often masked by the use of overwhelming materials. I am not interested in today’s architecture,” says the architect. “I am fascinated by old architecture that we cannot fully understand and thus stimulates our imagination.”
Projekt, no. 9/10, Prague, Sept. 2010, pp. 28‑37. (cs)
The traditional Andalusian flamenco has inspired many artists: Federico García Lorca on poems, Pablo Picasso on paintings and sculptures — and the young Italian architect Antonino Cardillo to a house.
H.O.M.E., no. 2/10, Berlin, Feb. 2010, p. 126. (de)
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.”
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.
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 .
Inside Outside, no. 280, Mumbai, Oct. 2008, p. 119. (en)
The passing time, however, leaves the interiors the same, creating only a temporary spectacle during which the play of colours and light becomes a space in itself.
Vox Design, no. 8, Warsaw, Feb. 2008, pp. 54‑57. (pl)
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.
Home Review, vol. 6, no. 5, Mumbai, Sept. 2007, p. 60. (en)
