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Vaulted House

Parma,

The second instalment in the Houses for No One collection, this tower-like dwelling embarks on a journey into the realm of silence and sound. It engages with light to manipulate perception, proposing an exploration of the mutable architecture articulated by the passing time

Genres work
Series for no one
Themes forms vaults
Typology detached house
Intervention types new construction
Stages unbuilt
Places parma

Work

Antonino Cardillo

The light, before entering the central space, is forced to filter and cool down in the void of the corner towers, light chambers similar to those used by the masters of the Baroque.

— Paolo Portoghesi, La luce nell’architettura moderna (1969)

The three zones of working, living and resting are represented in sequence along an axis by juxtaposed edifices: a trapezoidal polyhedron, an ample rectangular hall and a tower articulated on two levels.

On the inside, openings and pathways weave a possible dialogue between each cavity. Silences are not all alike. The silence of a large nave is different from that of a room. And the outdoor sounds of the countryside perceived through a great silence can be yet more diverse.

So, in a hall, modulated in plan on three squares six metres wide the heart of the design is formed. The flooring in travertine and a covering of Venetian stucco spread on the ample side developed lengthways, create, via a chromatic homogeneity, a continuous ribbon which, enveloping the observer, offers a sort of blank page on which to write his or her own experience.

At the same time, the light, coming from the long sides of the room, has the possibility to interpret the space. On the south side the position of the windows welcomes in the winter sun and, through a thick wide cement lunetta, screens the sun in summer.

Below, in the centre, a block of travertine is excavated from a low cavity. Inside it a block functions as a work surface for the kitchen, occupying the centre; in the background a door leads to the pantry and two windows mark the corners of the room leading towards the outside.

On the opposite side of the hall, to the north, the windows shrink towards the corners, becoming vertical. From floor to ceiling, the openings pick up the fleeting light of the sun at dawn and at sunset in summer which, penetrating the room diagonally, colour the space with new meanings.

Finally, moving between the hall and the tower of the rest, an azure light, concealing its origins, slips from above along the wooden and cemented walls of the walkways and the stairs accessing the tower, forming an iridescent stage, a picture in perspective in mutation.

, London, 7 April 2008

Vaulted House
Cement lunette and tower seen obliquely from the countryside in autumn
Vaulted House
Passage to the tower: azure light along wooden and cemented walls; entrance in the tower
Vaulted House
Hall: lengthways towards the trilithon fireplace; barrel vault of Venetian stucco
Vaulted House
Hall: towards the south side, low cavity with a work surface under the cement lunette
Vaulted House
Tower, hall with cement lunette, and trapezoidal block in sequence along the axis

Data

  • Time: Design (Nov 2007 – Jan 2008); CGI (Feb – Mar 2008)
  • Place: Felino, Parma, Italy
  • Area: 370 m² (two storeys)

Credits

  • Architecture: Antonino Cardillo
  • CGI, text: Antonino Cardillo
  • Translation: Charles Searson

Poetics

2025 – 2011

This hermeneutic reading arises from conversations with Miriam Scotto di Santolo and approaches the Seven Houses for No One as imaginal architectures. Never built, yet received as real once published in the international press, they are read through Henry Corbin’s mundus imaginalis: an intermediate world where imagination is a faculty of knowledge and the image possesses metaphysical substance. They are not imagined houses but archetypal visions arising within the ʿālam al-mithāl, the world of visions of Islamic theosophy. Like Odysseus, who seeks not a dwelling but a return to origin, they are for no one because they belong to everyone: forms that ask to be contemplated rather than inhabited.

antoninocardillo.com, Eryx, (en, it)

This lecture articulates the architect’s craft as four questions – style, form, proportion, position – where the first asks who one is and the last where one is. The first is answered by the story of the Seven Houses for No One: bypassing the figure of the client, a corpus that seemed built and was a literary invention enters the dominant narrative of architecture as a ‘Trojan horse’, and becomes a form of subversion. In the second the houses are reconsidered: they sought a continuity with Frank Lloyd Wright’s residences, in a syncretic synthesis with the late antiquity of Rome, certain Eastern architectures and reinforced concrete.

La giovane architettura 4, Dipartimento di Architettura, Università di Palermo, Palermo, (en, it)

This lecture reflects on the manipulation of history, the illusion of professionalism, and the integrity of architectural creation. Of the Seven Houses for No One the speaker says he sees them as a bad answer to a good question: how to influence the closed system of a journalism tied to corporate practices. By creating the computer images of his own projects himself, he reintegrates an artificial division of roles; and those houses teach him to bridge the gap between the idea and its representation, in images that attempt a mythology.

Constructed Realities, Goethe‑Universität, Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, (de, en, it)

Recorded inside the House of Dust in Rome, this interview returns to the architectures published as built and realised only on the computer. They are called an imaginary map of places, derived from the study of history, which the idea of architecture as imagery runs through entirely: Ledoux, Boullée, Sant’Elia, the early projects of Mies van der Rohe. The action is acknowledged as subversive, a breach in a wall without which nothing would have been built; the interview with Der Spiegel is the story about the story.

Radio3 Suite, RAI Radio 3, Rome, (en, it)

Returning to the Palermo lecture room where he had graduated, Cardillo set out the historical foundation of his own practice: the continuation of a tradition against the erasure of the avant-gardes, Sicilian identity as a method of synthesis, the building understood as a sounding box for light. The Vaulted House provided the demonstration, between the halls of Marrakesh and the vaults of late antiquity.

Storia dell’architettura contemporanea, Università di Palermo, Palermo,

Historiography

2017 – 2008

with

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.

DEAR Magazin, no. 1, Berlin, April 2017, p. 84 (de, en, it)

This 3,982 sq ft property in Parma, Italy, was born out of Cardillo’s trip to Marrakesh, Morocco, where he was fascinated by the 19th century Bahia Palace.

Home, India Today, Mumbai, 12 January 2010, p. 47 (en, it)

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

Home Review, vol. 7, no. 5, Mumbai, September 2008, p. 72 (en, it)

Exhibitions

2025 – 2009

Dipartimento di Architettura, Università di Palermo

At the invitation of Professor Antonio Biancucci, with Salvatore Oddo, Antonino Cardillo presented his works in the lecture ‘Style, form, proportion, position’, in the La giovane architettura 4 conferences series at the Dipartimento di Architettura of the Università di Palermo. In the sections ‘Style’ and ‘Form’ he argued the Seven Houses for No One series.

Palermo, (en, it)

Istituto Luce Cinecittà

At the invitation of curator Diego Grammatico, Cardillo talked about his relationship between video games and architecture in the lecture ‘From Zak McKracken to House of Dust’, part of a panel for the Rome Video Game Lab festival of the Istituto Luce at the Cinecittà Studios. He told the story of the Seven Houses for No One series: houses produced in virtual reality that for years many believed had been built.

Rome, (en, it)

Goethe-Universität

At the invitation of Professors Chris Dähne, Frederike Lausch and Bettina Rudhof, Cardillo screened the video Seven Houses for No One before the lecture ‘Faked reality’, part of the Constructed Realities series of the Goethe-Universität at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt. For almost ten minutes the images of the seven houses unfolded over the Prelude to Act I of Wagner’s Lohengrin, between his own words to Der Spiegel and an aphorism by Oswald Mathias Ungers on reality.

Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, (de, en, it)

Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum

The curator Hubertus Adam exhibited publications on the House of Convexities, of the series Seven Houses for No One, and mentions the ‘Cardillo phenomenon’ in the show Bildbau. Schweizer Architektur im Fokus der Fotografie at the Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum in Basel.

Basel, – (de, en, it)

Facoltà di Architettura, Università di Palermo

In the lecture ‘The lesson of history in architectural design’, part of Antonietta Iolanda Lima’s course Storia dell’architettura contemporanea, Cardillo demonstrated on this house what that lesson means: ‘the rectangular space is derived from a journey to Marrakesh […]. Onto this scheme I grafted a great vault that I had long had in mind. I wanted to restate that material quality of the vaults of late antiquity’.

Palermo, (en, it)

Chelsea College of Art and Design

At the invitation of Professor Ana Araujo, Cardillo recounted his computer-generated images in the ‘Light and rendering’ lecture part of the Spaces & Narrations lecture series at Chelsea College of Art and Design. The Vaulted House appeared in the video of images that accompanied the lecture.

London, (en, it)

ArtHertz

At the invitation of musician John Foxx, a print of Ellipse 1501 House and the video Tales of Light – featuring four projects later included in the Houses for No One series – were exhibited as part of a show dedicated to artists he inspired, held at The Horse Hospital in London. The Vaulted House was one of the four projects in the video.

The Horse Hospital, London, – (en, it)

Publications

2025 – 2008

Work texts

Theoretical writings

  • , ‘Stile, forma, proporzione, posizione’, lecture as part of La giovane architettura 4, ed. Antonio Biancucci, Dipartimento di Architettura, Università di Palermo, Palermo, 25 March 2025; transcript published on , 1 April 2025.
  • , ‘’ [television programme], Artbox, interviewed by Eleonora Angius, La7, Milan, 6 March 2025; transcript published on , 6 March 2025.
  • , ‘Un percorso d’integrazione’, lecture as part of the encounter , part of the series of cultural events of the Museo Agostino Pepoli, Trapani, 26 May 2023; transcript published on , 20 Sept. 2025.
  • , ‘Reality does not exist’, live interview as part of Mitte/Rand Salon, interviewed by Tim Berge, Berlin, 21 Nov. 2017; transcript published on , 6 Oct. 2025.
  • , ‘’ [radio programme], Trailblazers Network Trapani Erasmus Generation, interviewed by Federico Chiarello, Antonio Mistretta, ZAK Radio, Trapani, 20 April 2017; transcript published on , 23 Sept. 2025.
  • , ‘Faked reality’, lecture as part of the Constructed Realities, ed. Chris Dähne, Frederike Lausch, Bettina Rudhof, Goethe‑Universität, Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, 1 Dec. 2015; transcript published on , 12 May 2021.
  • , ‘’ [radio programme], Radio3 Suite, interviewed by Andrea Penna, RAI Radio 3, Rome, 6 June 2013.
  • , ‘’, interviewed by Andrea Massaro, Antonio Panzica, Alessandro Montemagno, Radio Panorama, Palermo, 17 July 2012.
  • , ‘La lezione della storia nel progetto di architettura’, lecture as part of the course Storia dell’architettura contemporanea, ed. Antonietta Iolanda Lima, Facoltà di Architettura, Università di Palermo, Palermo, 24 Jan. 2011; transcript published on , 19 Aug. 2026.
  • , ‘’, MAN, no. 277, interviewed by Teresa Morales, Barcelona, Dec. 2010, p. 22.

Bibliography

2024 – 2008

Reception in press and internet

Reception in social media