Apartment ‘House of Dust’ in Rome
Christine Schroder
In Rome, the architect Antonino Cardillo has designed the “House of Dust” for a notary friend. A 100‑square‑metre apartment in which the interplay of light and shadow acquires an entirely new significance. Through differing surface textures and materials, ever‑changing, evocative atmospheres emerge, and thanks to the application of the Golden Ratio as an ideal proportional system, a balanced harmony establishes itself almost effortlessly within the living spaces.
Rome, the eternal city on the Tiber. Here, the histories of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the modern era converge with the contemporary present, and the secular with Christianity. Architectural styles such as Romanesque, Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism all found their point of departure here. Engineering achievements such as aqueducts, which channel water from great distances into the city, were perfected here. Alongside the development of stylistic elements that remain valid to this day, the invention of concrete during the Roman Empire is considered a fundamental contribution to architecture. The foundations of our political system and legal order – including the separation of powers, citizenship and democracy – also derive from Roman precedents – not to mention the Latin script, still the most widely used writing system in the world.
Within this influential context, the Sicilian architect Antonino Cardillo found inspiration for the design of an apartment in which he elevates the materiality of dust. In 2009, he was selected by Wallpaper* magazine as one of the 30 best young architects in the world; since then, the young radical – who enjoys probing the boundaries between fiction and reality in his designs – has been regarded as one of Italy’s most promising architectural talents. Cardillo has been friends with the client for quite some time, and thus was granted complete freedom in shaping the new apartment. It occupies the upper floor of a building from the early twentieth century, located not far from the Villa Borghese park, considered one of the most beautiful in the city. Before the renovation, the rooms were characterised by a cool emptiness in the style of the 1960s, exacerbated by poor proportions between the relatively high ceilings and the small window openings. The architect has now brought this to an end and, in full accord with the wishes of the client couple, has introduced harmonious spatial proportions through skilful interventions.
In his designs, Cardillo consistently draws upon historical elements, for to the Sicilian, a pronounced awareness of history is indispensable for producing good contemporary work. He also values the influence of foreign cultures, and thus his workplace is not tied to a fixed location but consists of his laptop, which he can place anywhere in the world to allow his creativity free rein. The apartment is accessed through a small corridor that leads to the kitchen on the left and to the living room on the right, from which one reaches the study and an introverted sleeping area. When required, the kitchen can be separated by means of a pivoting wall panel. When open, it stands offset beside the wall. Cardillo has visually lowered the ceiling by applying a coarse, earth‑coloured plaster – which he refers to as a ‘layer of dust’ – giving the rooms a cave‑like quality. All windows and doorways terminate at this artificial horizon, directing the incoming light deliberately into the lower, light‑coloured zone.
Only a ceiling lamp and a shelf in the living room cross the line between the rough texture above and the smooth, light‑grey plastered wall beneath, whose height was determined using the Golden Ratio. In the living room, instead of a carpet, oak floorboards have been inlaid into the polished concrete floor, which corresponds chromatically with the earth‑coloured ceiling and lends the space a sense of warmth. The entrance area and kitchen are flanked by a series of wallpapered doors concealing storage space. For their design, Cardillo drew inspiration from fourteenth‑century Italian paintings. Through an equally inconspicuous door in the living room, marked only by a pink glass doorknob, one enters a narrow passage leading to the private area with dressing room, bedroom and bathroom – a deliberately intimate zone, clearly separated from the rest. Here, the coarse plaster disappears, replaced by smooth walls and ceilings in a pale pink. The shower and washbasin area, staged through lighting, lends the bedroom a slightly surreal quality, as these elements would conventionally belong in the bathroom. The cylindrical shower curtain suspended from the ceiling forms the only textile element in the entire apartment. Otherwise, the architect has succeeded in creating, through solid materials – which, through their texture and chromaticity, produce an unusually austere atmosphere – an apartment that, in its own distinctive way, processes both the history of architecture and the particular history of the city of Rome.
