Project for the oratory Sala Laurentina of the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo with green archway, pink rough plaster and silver rectangle of limestone
Interpretation
Antonino Cardillo
We live away from all neighbours on a land’s end, with the sea roaring on either side of us, and no one can hurt us. — Samuel Butler
The coral cave is a refuge from the world. A grotto where love can still happen. The place where the city regains its sacral dimension that binds those who were to those who are. The coral cave explores a pre-modern idea: when architecture was imagination and the city was the labyrinth of memory. That labyrinth renewed every day with the caresses of our eyes; that speaks to us, mutedly, of lives lived. The image is the place where the dead speak to the living. Where it confirms the idea of life as permanence and tradition. Without this silent dialogue, the city dies; entertainment and alienation take over neutralizing the subversive potential of love. The coral cave speaks of the sacred that comes from the sea. The cadence of space recounts the allegories of beauty and metamorphosis imaged from shells evoked by the sediments of the stone base, and corals, to whose willowy asperities alludes the pink perpendicular vault. Shells and corals populate the imagery of the town of Trapani. The story of the arrival of the Madonna from the sea and the carved stones of her sanctuary reveal how, along with the tradition of corals, the theme of the shell is a fundamental myth of the sacredness of the city. The colour and tactile surfaces of the Specus rediscover the sensuality of the stone and dust that speak of the place and the bowels of the earth where they were carved. Thus Specus Corallii, with its evocation of a mysterious underwater dimension, relates that imaginary which, from the sea, has sedimented for millennia the sense of the life of the city and its landscape. The coral cave looks like an antique oratory. The classic configuration of its architecture, a rectangle governed by the ‘silver ratio’, makes it available for different uses and interpretations; preventing the dominance of function and technology, always casual and transitory pretexts for architecture, from bringing about the obsolescence of the work.
This text was first published in Specus Corallii,[↗] Cattedrale di Trapani, Oct. 2016, pp. 11‑12.
Place: Sala Laurentina, Via Domenico Giglio, 12, Trapani, Italy
Area: 260 m² (one storey)
Typology: oratory
Credits
Architecture, construction management: Antonino Cardillo
Client: Consiglio Parrocchiale degli Affari Economici, Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, Diocese of Trapani (director: Gaspare Gruppuso; councilors: Giuseppe Martinelli, Maurizio La Rocca, Giuseppe Chiaramonte, Mario Ruggirello; secretary: Leo Santi)
Construction foreman: Vincenzo Daidone
Masonry: Mario Daidone, Rocco Maranzano, Nino Canino
Electricians: Antonio Bica, Giuseppe Oddo, Antonio Senia
So, in what is not real you cannot see the real; while in what is real I have no reference to what is not real. Here is Plato’s speech that brings back to the initial moment of knowledge. Plato calls it the paradox of our reality.
La Camera dello Scirocco, Palermo, 8 May 2024. (en, it)
Whether he is working on his imaginary concepts or his tangible projects, Cardillo’s unique, archetypical work synthesises centuries of civilisation and makes eager use of historic building elements. […] His monumental, almost sacred rooms—a cave, a labyrinth or an oratory—breathe an aura of mysticism.
Besides famous ancient temples, Norman cathedrals, and Baroque palaces, they discovered modern architectural marvels [in Sicily], such as Antonino Cardillo’s Specus Corallii in Trapani […]
We cannot decide whether Specus Corallii looks more like emerging from the depths of the ocean or whether it is the image of the ocean itself which on the distant horizon coincides with the sky as if they are reaching their love-making peak.
Architecture and Eroticism. An Imaginary Wandering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, June 2019, pp. 80‑117. (el, en)
The coral tones of the spaces speak not just of the material but its relationship with the past of the city of Trapani. Space brings along, the reference of the sea with the coral shades and shell textures where the history will live on as indirect depictions. The coral caves have a lot of stories echoing.
re-thinkingthefuture.com, New Delhi, 10 Aug. 2019. (en)
This space evokes love and loss, nostalgia, melancholy, and life’s most essential inaudible philosophies. Most importantly, this long dark cave can certainly be trusted.
[email], ed. Matt Edwards, San Luis Obispo, 29 March 2018. (en, it)
The spaces he has designed make clear the endless distance that separates them from what they evoke—while the measurement of distance is the most proper meaning of the evocation.
Casabella, no. 879, dir. Francesco Dal Co, Milan, Nov. 2017, p. 30. (en, it, jp)
The bold stroke of a fine brush on a plastered canvas defines the apical arch, repeated in tandem to create relentless perspectives and interminable depths.
Mondo* Arc India, no. 15, New Delhi, July 2017, p. 51. (en)
Antonino Cardillo has dedicated himself to a form of architecture with centuries-old tradition: the artificial grotto, which he translates into contemporary forms. Manifestations of his poetic spaces exist in London and Rome. The latest was created in Sicily.
AD Germany, no. 178, Munich, April 2017, p. 163. (de, en, it)
Trapani has recently earned a new pearl for its historic centre. In 2016 the work of restoration and total architectural re-design of a very old and historic building located in Via Generale Domenico Giglio, 12, a stone’s throw from the Cathedral of S. Lorenzo Martire.
Strenna d’Agosto 2016, La Ragnatela, Rome, March 2017, pp. 305‑307. (it)
Antonino Cardillo masters the art of telling stories through spaces and materials: visitors disappear into a mysterious passage that conjures up hidden underwater worlds. At the same time, these are familiar images and known forms. The world remains a labyrinth of memories, the architect is a time traveller—and architecture becomes ecstasy.
The roughness of pozzolana, used for millennia as a coating, cancels, with its chiaroscuro effects due to the particular technique of roughcast application, the separation of the joining angles between the roof and the walls, evoking the airy quality of a vault that the sacred place must have once possessed.
Antonino Cardillo, ‘A synchronicity of cultures and civilisations’, paper presented to the Dessauer Gespräche, ed. Johannes Kister, Hochschule Anhalt, Dessau Institute of Architecture, 13 Nov. 2019. https://www.antoninocardillo.com/en/anthology/of-the-architect/articles/a-synchronicity-of-cultures-and-civilisations/
Evdoxia Karageorgi, Konstantina Vasileiadou, ‘Specus Corallii’, in Architecture and Eroticism. An Imaginary Wandering, thesis, Tutor Apostolos Kalfopoulos, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, June 2019, pp. 80‑117.
Kerstin Schultz, Hedwig Wiedemann-Tokarz, Eva Maria Herrmann, ‘Inherent color and material color’[↗] [contents], in Thinking Color in Space, Birkhäuser, Berlin-Boston, Dec. 2018, pp. 314‑315.
Norbert Schmidt, ‘Kostely etc.’,[↗]Centre for Theology and Arts [website], Univerzita Karlova, Prague, Oct. 2017.
Mrinalini Ghadiok, ‘Elemental’ (pdf), Mondo* Arc India, no. 15, New Delhi, July 2017, pp. 6, 10, 50‑55.
Francesca Gottardo, ‘Il rifugio della memoria’ (pdf) [contents], Abitare la Terra, no. 41, dir. Paolo Portoghesi, Rome, May 2017, pp. 44‑47.
Antonino Cardillo, ‘Una storia impossibile’, The Trail Blazers [podcast], ed. Federico Chiarello, Antonio Mistretta, ZAK Radio, Trapani, 20 April 2017.
Jeanette Kunsmann, Stephan Burkoff, ‘Architektur und Wahrheit’ (pdf), DEAR Magazin, no. 1, Berlin, April 2017, pp. 1, 3, 14, 72‑75. baunetz-id.de[↗]
Andreas Kühnlein, ‘Architektur: Traumwelt’ (pdf), AD Germany, no. 178, Munich, April 2017, p. 163.
