The fifth instalment in the ‘For No One’ collection, this dwelling embarks on a voyage into the realm of fear and unconfessed desires. It engages with light to manipulate perception, proposing an exploration of diverse formal identities
Work
Antonino Cardillo
All I wanted was to get closer to that particular atmosphere, but because of the echo I couldn’t get it anywhere other than the church. […] I realised that when you sing in those spaces there is a delay, a refraction that you can harmonise with your voice. […] A sort of ‘architectural music’. […] Then I thought I could compose music that was very modern using digital architecture, while expressing a very primitive type of sound: I think it was used before Catholicism, sung in caves and oceans — J. Foxx
Secretly, everyone is attracted to what he is afraid of and sometimes fear reawakens desires that cannot be confessed. We remain perturbed, recognising that in remote parts of our interior universe resides an apparent otherness. We discover that the concepts of identity and difference are ambiguous, and often, paradoxically, difference becomes an instrument of investigation into our own identity. Two distinct parts of a dwelling here become a pretext for telling a story between two diverse formal identities. Designed for a suburb of Melbourne on a rectangular plot, in plan the house is in two parts. One public which in elevation looks like the upturned keel of a boat or a funny concrete moon that emerges from the pool in front, whose design is characterised by a deviation from the straight pathway. The other, private part takes the form of a long, narrow building set against the perimeter, which, through the progressive decomposition of its component parts, creates a portico open to the garden but closed to the car park. In being created in space, each of the two geometric identities retains an echo of a presumed common origin. Thus signs of one often appear in the other, though elaborated according to different processes. Though diverse, the elements have a relationship, and the sound of one resonates in the other; especially in the cave, where the achievement of this osmosis introduces doubt as to where identity finishes and where difference begins.
Apart from the involuntary irony that Der Spiegel appears in both impostor stories, once as a prosecutor and once as an accused, they differ fundamentally.
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)
After the representations were revealed as desired pictures, he replied: “Just see it like a literary narrative, […] a fairy tale. It is also not important that things actually happened.”
Konstruierte Realitäten, Goethe‑Universität, Deutsche Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, 1 Dec. 2015. (de, en, it)
In fact, Cardillo is right here at its core, because as this essay also wanted to show, images of unrealised and utopian architectures can become an integral part of architectural history and not insignificantly influence it.
iacsa.eu, vol. 4, no. 1, Basel, May 2013, p. 11. (de)
Cardillo, who meticulously lists all these press reports on his website, only holds up the mirror to the architectural media and refers to a fundamental problem: How should young architects get to a builder without having published beforehand?
Or how we are constructing our reality from the material and the imaginary through the media today and what consequences this has. No simple questions, really. If the Cardillo case now served to seriously discuss at least one of these questions again, it might have done more for the architectural discourse than those who think they always have the answer to them.
german-architects.com, Stuttgart, 29 July 2012. (de)
Incidentally, architecture has always been ephemeral and virtual, he explains. From Palladio to Schinkel, from Sant’Elia to Mies van der Rohe, architects influenced architectural development and changed reality with ideas in the form of surrogates.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, no. 164, Zurich, 17 July 2012, p. 40. (de)
When Felix Krull was young, he thought for a long time about whether he should see the world small or big. According to his ‘nature’, he then respected the world for a great and infinitely tempting appearance in his later life. He became the happiest impostor in literary history.
Der Spiegel, no. 27/12, Hamburg, 2 July 2012, p. 121. (de, it)
“In contemporary architecture, a lack of idea is often masked by the use of overwhelming materials. I am not interested in today’s architecture,” says the architect. “I am fascinated by old architecture that we cannot fully understand and thus stimulates our imagination.”
Projekt, no. 9/10, Prague, Sept. 2010, pp. 28‑37. (cs)
Liliana Adamo, ‘FAKEcollage. Non credo ai miei occhi!’ (pdf), in Dossier Collage, cur. Fabio Cappello, Rossella Ferorelli, Luigi Mandraccio, Gian Luca Porcile, Università di Genova, Genoa, July 2022, pp. 35, 39.
Carolin Höfler, ‘Hyper desire’ (pdf),[↗] paper presented to the Wunsch, Technische Hochschule Köln, Cologne, 1 June 2016.
Carolin Höfler, ‘Modelle in Wirklichkeit. Die digitalen Bildversprechen von Antonino Cardillo’, paper presented to the Constructed Realities, ed. Chris Dähne, Frederike Lausch, Bettina Rudhof, Goethe‑Universität, Deutsche Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, 1 Dec. 2015. https://www.antoninocardillo.com/en/anthology/on-the-architect/mirrors/models-in-reality/
Antonino Cardillo, ‘Faked reality’, paper presented to the Constructed Realities, ed. Chris Dähne, Frederike Lausch, Bettina Rudhof, Goethe‑Universität, Deutsche Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, 1 Dec. 2015. https://www.antoninocardillo.com/en/anthology/of-the-architect/articles/faked-reality/
Carl Zillich, with Fabrizio Gallanti, Lars Krückeberg, Volkwin Marg, Wolfram Putz, Peter Reischer, Andreas Ruby, Tobias Walliser, Thomas Willemeit, ‘Causa Cardillo: “Geht’s noch ohne Hochstapelei?”’,[↗] bkult.de, Berlin, 10 Sept. 2012.
Peter Reischer, ‘Grandiose Luftschlösser’ (pdf), Am Sonntag, no. 32, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich, 5 Sept. 2012, p. 35.
Peter Reischer, ‘Schöner Klonen’,[↗]Falter, no. 19/12, Vienna, 9 May 2012, pp. 30‑31.
Helen Geng Haizhen, ‘印象派建筑师’ (pdf), Interior Architecture of China, Beijing, Nov. 2011, pp. 48‑51.
Antonino Cardillo, ‘Taking a position’ (pdf), build Das Architekten-Magazin, no. 5/11, ed. Ralf Ferdinand Broekman, Olaf Winkler, Wuppertal, Oct. 2011, p. 50.
