Palette
Memories for Cruising
Parma,
Project for an apartment near the train station with polychrome sequence of rooms, diagonal striped parquet and mdf doors: colours, light and plant metamorphosis reshape a modest apartment – polychrome rooms, diagonal parquet and doors in eggshell silence
Work
Antonino Cardillo
When I reached the edge of the solitary garden, I was already weary. Nevertheless, I pushed the rickety gate and entered. A multitude of tall, sharp reeds, like lances, besieged a well ahead. A rosebush had grown out of all proportion and blocked a path; and through the interlacing of the thorny branches, a statue could be glimpsed, entirely clothed in green by mosses and lichens. Suddenly, a mysterious unease occupied my mind.
— Gabriele D’Annunzio, I Crisantemi (1916)
This is an internal renovation of an apartment of 100 square metres situated near the station of Parma (Italy). The aim of the project is to create a work of architecture using a pre-existing partition design and a limited budget.
The partition design dates from the early 1900s: an enfilade stretching for 20 metres on the north side; two zones painted bright red on the south side with rooms inside; double window-doors of 1 × 3 metres, single doors of 0.80 × 2.10 metres.
The space was transformed using the application of colours and materials, without changing appliances, structure and internal walls. So a succession of coloured zones overlaps the existing design in a symmetrical layout.
The ingredients of the renovation are: a palette of muted greens, yellows and reds [low saturation]; flooring of different striped woods arranged diagonally, and MDF doors painted in an eggshell finish.
The theme of the design is the metamorphosis of plants – shown in the change of colours of the plant in the last stage of fruiting – and the chromatic sound of the forest, made up of that mysterious play of light on the fronds of the plants.
Here, the light animates the space: the architectural design is made real by the traces of light on the walls of the apartment. And in this journey of transformation, the light reveals itself, verifying that moment when the Architecture is not the building itself but its interpretation.
Images
Data
- Time: Design (Dec 2018 – Feb 2019); Construction (Mar – Jul 2019); Photography, Text (May 2021)
- Place: Via Trento, Parma, Italy
- Area: 100 m² (single storey)
Credits
- Architecture, construction supervision: Antonino Cardillo
- Client: Luca Cardella
- Decorating: Raffaele Mantovani
- Flooring: Francesco Bia
- Doors: Saint Germain
- Small table: Nicola Zuliani, Impuro
- Furniture making: Erio Gabrielli, Sistema
- Sofa: Sense, Samoa
- Pillows: Giuseppa Adragna
- Photography, text: Antonino Cardillo
- Translation: Charles Searson
- Thanks to Brianna Ruland
Poetics
2023
An integrative journey
This lecture traces a decade of research aimed at reintegrating psychology, anthropology, historiography and archaeology into architecture, a discipline fragmented by modern specialisation. Of Memories for Cruising, an apartment in Parma in a small early twentieth-century building, it says that it intervenes, on a modest budget, on a historical type that had lost the signs of its own historicity. A chromatic progression from green to pink, passing through ochre, evokes wandering in a wood and the metamorphosis of the plant up to the ripening of the fruit: a semantics of vegetal colour.
L’antropologia nell’architettura, Museo Agostino Pepoli, Trapani, (en, it)
Historiography
2021
Outstanding spaces around the globe
Ellie Stathaki
The project had a limited budget, but what it may lack in scale, it makes up in creative ambition.
wallpaper.com, London, 7 July 2021 (en, it)
Exhibitions
2023
L’antropologia nell’architettura
Museo Agostino Pepoli
Following an introduction by anthropologist Rita Cedrini, Antonino Cardillo presented his built works in the lecture ‘An integrative journey’, part of the encounter L’antropologia nell’architettura at the Museo Agostino Pepoli in Trapani. Memories for Cruising appeared under the title ‘Parma Apartment’.
Trapani, (en, it)
Publications
2023
Theoretical writings
- Antonino Cardillo, ‘Un percorso d’integrazione’, lecture as part of the encounter L’antropologia nell’architettura, part of the series of cultural events of the Museo Agostino Pepoli, Trapani, 26 May 2023; transcript published on antoninocardillo.com, 20 Sept. 2025.
Bibliography
2021
Reception in press and internet
- Ellie Stathaki, ‘Apartment interior design: outstanding spaces around the globe’, wallpaper.com, London, 7 July 2021; ellie stathaki, features, interior design [index].