Review
Peter Reischer
The architect Antonino Cardillo builds only on the internet. With his fake houses, he deceives the international press.
When celebrities are retouched and slimmed down, and a distracting beam or flowerpot is airbrushed out of a stunning architectural photo for a glossy magazine, it is somehow understandable and acceptable, aside from the fact that the average viewer will not even notice it.
In 2010, the government-affiliated Egyptian newspaper Al‑Ahram simply replaced President Obama with then-President Mubarak in a photo of peace talks at the White House. However, the deception was uncovered. The Italian architect Antonino Cardillo has been flooding the international media scene for some time with reports about his buildings. Architectural magazines constantly receive submissions with beautiful images and project descriptions of his latest works: single-family houses in Japan, Italy, England, Spain, France, Morocco, Australia… All very interesting-looking architectures, sculptural and bathed in wonderful lighting. Perfect representations of an ideology that, according to the architect’s self-description, deals with the connection between Mediterranean culture and the myth of the North through light.
Over the bay of Osaka, Japan, Antonino Cardillo recently realised a single-family house that aims at a dialogue between European and Japanese spatial traditions. The very realistic-looking house is the Nomura House in Osaka. The project is extensively described in build – Das Architekten Magazin (www.build-magazin.com). One sees an exterior shot and many interior photos. Probably the building has only one side. An email to the developer in Japan, the Nomura Koumuten Corporation in Osaka, has so far gone unanswered. build – Das Architekten Magazin dedicates space in the latest issue to an extensive interview with editor-in-chief Ralf F. Broekman and Olaf Winkler (the second one already in his steep career).
Here he says, among other things, that he is currently designing a Postmodern Café for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. This fact also appears on the architect’s homepage. In 2009, he was chosen by Wallpaper* magazine as one of the 30 best young architects. On the homepage of Wallpaper*, there is a photo of a ‘temporary Sergio Rossi Shop’ in Milan, designed and photographed by Cardillo.
In February 2010, the German magazine H.O.M.E. published an 8-page report on his House of Convexities. It is said to have been completed in 2008 and is located near Barcelona in Spain. The architect keeps the client secret. Editor Judith Jenner spoke with him—the interview can also be read on Cardillo’s homepage (here the article is 11 pages long)—and is convinced that Cardillo’s interpretation of Flamenco (“If architecture is music in stone, can its limbs dance?”) finds its counterpart in this “play of light and shadow” in the House of Convexities. In 2011, he completed a single-family house in Pembrokeshire, England. The Purple House with a construction period from 2009 to 2011. There are plans, axonometrics, sections, material lists, details of the interior furnishings such as lamps and sofas. The architect remains silent about the client. When asked if he works with local labour on his projects, he says: “About construction, I am used to work with local labour.” In an Asian magazine, he gives an analysis of Zaha Hadid’s architecture—attributing her forms to the influence of Soviet revolutionary architecture. What would the ‘Grande Dame’ of the scene say about that? In another magazine, he talks about his passion for the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry, as well as Mies van der Rohe.
Absolutely authentic, as if he had known them all. He has obviously read a lot, because in his writings he quotes Goethe (“Italy without Sicily makes no picture in the soul; here is the key to everything.”), speaks in his interviews about humanism and history like a great philosopher, and draws an arc from antiquity through the fall of the Soviet Union to urban planning and the problems of the present day.
However, a visit to the homepage (www.antoninocardillo.com) of this architect brings strange things to light. First of all, one is greeted and then followed by ‘psychedelic music’ (Pink Floyd comes to mind) (only turning off the sound helps). The homepage is perfectly set up and accessible in 28 different languages! Essays, a comprehensive list of 27 projects (almost all executed), reference lists, press reviews (98 magazines! including international ones, that have written about him), videos, catalogues, awards, and prizes; facebook, twitter, tumblr, linkedin are all networked.
The sparsest part of his web presence is the biography (probably on purpose), here you only learn that he was born in 1975 in Erice, Sicily (hence the Goethe quote). Somewhere a ‘degree’ appears, and that he studied under/with architecture critic and historian Antonietta Iolanda Lima (Italian architect) in Palermo. Nothing is mentioned about a degree or diploma. In 2004 he moved from Sicily to Rome and opened an office there. A physical address for his studio is not to be found, contact can only be made by email.
When you look at his portfolio available on the homepage, the following becomes apparent: They are all perfect photos of architectural projects with the corresponding—in typically convoluted architectural language—analyses and descriptions of the projects. However, if you enlarge the images to 200%, you see that they are renderings, visualisations—nothing real, nothing built. Although masterfully done, they are still just fake. Under each project is a list of magazines (mostly repeating names) in which it has already been published: H.O.M.E./ Berlin is the best known, but then come the exotic ones—Home India Today (Mumbai), Entremuros (Mexico City), Going Places (Malaysia Airlines), Touch Decor (Beirut), Landscape Design (Beijing), DFUN (Taiwan), The Outlook Magazine (Hong Kong).
The PDFs available for each publication open without any issues, the pages are smooth, without the usual bugs and shadows from scanning. So perfect as if they were specially laid out. They do not correspond to a typical magazine layout but rather appear like pure internet presentations. Most articles include full-page portraits of architect Cardillo: unshaven, open shirt collar, with a melancholic distant gaze, very theatrically staged.
A collaboration with the London Design Festival is hinted at, as well as participation in the 4th International Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam and Artindex of St-Petersburg and, of course, the aforementioned Postmodern Café for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. However, there is no indication on the web that any commission exists for the design. Almost every European online architecture magazine features his works as houses completed between 2006 and 2011. The fact sheets list construction costs, square metres, materials, furnishing companies, etc. Antonino Cardillo is always listed as the photographer. None of his supposedly built projects are documented with ‘real’ photos. 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!”
Antonino Cardillo, House of Convexities, Barcelona, 2008.