Cardillo

Open House Roma 2021

House of Dust, Via Piemonte 101, Ludovisi, Rome,  – 

Guided tours of Cardillo’s House of Dust, led by volunteer Alfredo Vattimo as part of the Open House Roma 2021 programme curated by Gaia Maria Lombardo


Event

Open House is the world’s largest event dedicated to promoting architecture. Founded in London in 1992, it now takes place annually in 45 cities. Since 2012, Open House Roma has offered free guided access to hundreds of architecturally and artistically significant sites. During the 2021 edition, Antonino Cardillo’s House of Dust, near Via Veneto, opens its doors to the public on the mornings of Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 October. Volunteer guide Alfredo Vattimo leads visitors through the house’s conceptual structure, followed by Massimiliano Beffa, who shares his experience as inhabitant and recounts the building process.

Area 3 map (Borghese-Ludovisi)


  • Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen
  • New Extension of the Faculty of Architecture
  • Palazzina Nebbiosi
  • Palazzo Corrodi
  • McKinsey & Company Offices
  • Accademia di Danimarca
  • Accademia d’Egitto
  • Villa Medici, Accademia di Francia
  • Casa Museo Giorgio De Chirico
  • Salone Margherita
  • Villa Maraini, Istituto Svizzero di Roma
  • Palazzo Piacentini
  • House of Dust
  • Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi
  • Between Borromini and Bernini: the Baroque and Via Pia
  • Ministry of the Navy

House of Dust

As a volunteer, Alfredo Vattimo accompanies visitors in their exploration of the House of Dust, introducing the founding concepts of the work and guiding the reading of its spatial narrative. The visit begins with the description of the entrance hall, conceived as a “cave”—the primordial origin of architecture, a place of protection and warmth—and continues through the living room, the bathroom and the bedroom, highlighting the three principles that structure the house: the theatrical dimension, the suspension of time, and the perceptual continuity of matter. Vattimo emphasises how the furnishings, drawn from different periods, contribute to placing the dwelling in an indefinite temporal dimension, while the natural and artificial light, changing throughout the day, continually transforms colours and atmospheres, rendering the house a narrative in perpetual becoming.

At the conclusion of the visit, the owner, Massimiliano Beffa, intervenes, interweaving the architectural explanation with his own daily experience as an inhabitant. Beffa describes how the architect Antonino Cardillo managed the construction process with extraordinary precision, resolving every detail in the preliminary phase through digital modelling and completing the site in just six months. He underlines how the house, despite its conceptual radicality, is profoundly welcoming and functional. He evokes the magic of the afternoon light that turns greys into earthy tones, the theatrical dimension of the spaces that in the evening become a stage, and the human quality of an architecture that conceals disorder behind its arches in order to restore order and harmony to everyday life. His testimony presents the House of Dust not only as a work of art and an architectural project, but as a living organism that educates, surprises and embraces both those who inhabit it and those who visit.

Open House Roma 2021

Publications

(selected)

Credits

  • Concept: Leonardo Mayol, Davide Paterna
  • Director: Davide Paterna
  • Programme: Gaia Maria Lombardo
  • Guide: Alfredo Vattimo
  • Assistants: Luisa Macchione, Martina Viscogliosi

  • Thanks to the owner Massimiliano Beffa