The third instalment in the ‘For No One’ collection, this structure embarks on a voyage into the realm of transition and movement. It engages with light to manipulate perception, proposing an exploration of the changing colours of the celestial hemisphere
Work
Antonino Cardillo
Architecture and music have met over the centuries […] to converse secretly in search of their common roots and fruitful interactions. Perhaps the most fruitful interaction can be found in certain dance figures, where the coordinated movement of bodies generates ephemeral architectural forms of supreme beauty. — P. Portoghesi
If architecture is music in stone can its ‘limbs’ dance? Architecture only remains still in pictures. In real life its natural state is one of transition. Both man and light move within it. Inside a house among coarse Mediterranean glades and corrugated stone walls, a slanting light, pierced by innumerable narrow repeated blades, inscribes and describes the walls with its impermanent, mutable hand. How many possible stories will this light tell over the course of a year? A curved wall jokes with the light. The light bathes the wall, but reaches the moment and the place in which, going beyond the curve, it takes a tangent, deciding what will be lit and what will be dark. And this movement suggests the indefinite, mutability, shading. Thus architecture becomes light interpreted through the ‘limbs’ of the architecture. Like shadows of flesh on flesh, whose forms are both definite and defining. Here, as in a Flamenco dance, the body breaks up, invading the space moving through its potential articulations without, however, defining the void, or, interpreting the many possibilities of moving within it: fleshy and sensual, but equally incisive and precise. Secret but luminous. Closed but open to a multitude of possibilities. A body inside another body. Compressed and continuous in its curvilinear trajectory. And yet, as in a Flamenco dance, the development of movement, its indefinable ardour, is made real by the successive instant. That solemn, still instant that seems to challenge eternity. Thus, tall and still, a wall opposes silence. And such stillness supports the preceding movement, giving sense to its being.
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)
The traditional Andalusian flamenco has inspired many artists: Federico García Lorca on poems, Pablo Picasso on paintings and sculptures—and the young Italian architect Antonino Cardillo to a house.
H.O.M.E., no. 2/10, Berlin, Feb. 2010, p. 126. (de)
True to its inspiration, the house has elegant twists and turns that create an impression of perpetual motion. The light inside keeps changing as the shifting sun filters in through the window’s blades. And each inner space, be it the curve of the walls, the arc of the roof, or the straight lines of the windows, comes alive when the light streams in.
The first to admit to being a dreamer, Cardillo concedes to inhabiting a virtual world, a parallel universe, moreover describing his fall into architecture as a chance happening.
The play of light within the convex walls of this house create a romantic aura that envelopes visitors and transports them into a world of wonder at the inspired superiority that made this beautifully shaped structure possible.
We’d all like a bit more space around the house. We’re not talking Changing Rooms-style wall hangings and naff trompe l’oeil—we mean golf club-swinging, echo-inducing caverns that make you wish you’d mastered acrobatic gymnastics whenever you walk into them.
In the theatrically sculpted volumes of high vaulted roofs and large spaces which dwarf the viewer, the voluptuous curves in the asymmetrical layout, and the slow, mutable chiaroscuro of light and shadow which marks the passing of time, is perhaps where Antonino’s signature lies. At least for the present.
Inside Outside, no. 280, Mumbai, Oct. 2008, p. 119. (en)
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/
Fahmi Firmansyah, ‘Studi banding tema’,[↗] in Pusat edukasi dan rekreasi Budaya Jombangan di Jombang: Tema association with other arts on dance architecture, thesis, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang, 27 Nov. 2015, pp. 95‑103.
Sophia Klinkenberg, ‘Body building: Second skin’, in Being in shape / shaping environments, thesis, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, The Hague, May 2015.
Alec Harris, ‘CISLA addendum’,[↗] in Choreographing Space: The Enhancement of Architecture Through Dance, thesis, Connecticut College, New London, 16 June 2014, pp. 1(53), 4(56).
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.
Sun, ‘Bermain dengan cahaya’ (pdf), Laras, no. 279, Jakarta, March 2012, pp. 88‑94, cover.
Antonino Cardillo, ‘House of Convexities’, in 2012 Comfortable Houses, ed. Xing Rihan, Rihan, Hong Kong, Dec. 2011, pp. 114‑115.
Helen Geng Haizhen, ‘印象派建筑师’ (pdf), Interior Architecture of China, Beijing, Nov. 2011, pp. 36‑39.
Fabio Rosseti, ‘Storie di luce’ (pdf), AND, no. 20, Firenze, Jan. 2011, pp. 72‑75.
Antonino Cardillo, ‘Values transcending time’ (pdf), build Das Architekten-Magazin, no. 4/10, ed. Ralf Ferdinand Broekman, Olaf Winkler, Wuppertal, Aug. 2010, p. 45.
Antonino Cardillo, ‘House of Convexities’, in Best selection of Shanglin, ed. Hu Yanli, Shanglin A&C, Hong Kong, July 2010, pp. 24‑27.
Antonino Cardillo, ‘House of Convexities’, in Architecture Zone, vol. II, ed. Xing Rihan, Rihan, Hong Kong, June 2010, pp. 182‑187.
Judith Jenner, ‘Ein Haus wie ein Tanz’ (pdf), H.O.M.E., no. 2/10, Berlin, Feb. 2010, pp. 120‑130.
Ridhi Kale, ‘Poetry of space’,[↗]Home, India Today, Mumbai, Jan. 2010, pp. 46‑48, 50, 52.
Karina González Fauerman, ‘Trazos con originalidad’ (pdf), Entremuros, no. 160, Reforma, Mexico City, Jan. 2010, pp. 30‑31, 38‑41.
Anonymous, ‘Convexities House’ (pdf), One Magazine, no. 17, Ottawa, Sept. 2009, p. 29.
Antonino Cardillo, ‘Plates 24‑27: House of Convexities’ (pdf), in Almanac of Architecture & Design 2009, ed. James Cramer, Jennifer Evans Yankopolus, Greenway, Atlanta, Jan. 2009, plates 24‑27.
