Lecture
Antonino Cardillo
About ten years ago, I decided to start a new chapter in my life. I moved to Rome and spent nine years there, immersed in the study of ancient architecture. I sought a deeper understanding, an alternative to contemporary architectural practice.
The work presented here is called House of Dust and concerns the renovation of an apartment on the fifth floor of a late 19th-century building in Rome, in the Ludovisi District. The scale here is metaphorical, with numerous layers of meaning and hidden stories. Each layer reflects my experiences in Rome, the knowledge acquired from the city, and the emotions encountered along the way. Building this work was special because it allowed me to express my ideas, synthesising different and seemingly out-of-fashion information. This work thus presents a wealth of information: some revealed, others hidden, and yet others completely concealed.
In modern and contemporary architecture, there is a tendency to reveal everything, overexposing spaces and thus eliminating the possibility for users to interpret them. I found it fascinating to discover the different interpretations that emerged from the owner and visitors during visits to this house. Each person had a unique perspective and a different interpretation of the architecture. My goal was precisely this: to create a miniature space that allowed for interpretation.
The space is designed like a screenplay. The experience of the space cannot be understood from photographs; the most important aspect of the project is how the space itself is reached. The project also explores the idea of the future, suggesting unpredictability. At certain points, a moment of dramatisation is introduced, which I believe is a possible alternative to the model of the glass house, where everything is supposed and predictable, and no emotion is possible.
Conversely, this house features many false doors and a large secret passage (priest-hole), inspired by video games and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Alice finds herself in a hall with many closed doors and finds an alternative solution to exit. This alternative solution is also proposed in the entrance of this house: a movable wall built as a pivot door. A recurring element of minimalist style that, for its precise location in the space-time of the project, reveals a new perception.
In its entirety, the space of the daytime rooms of the house features six elongated arched doors arranged in sequence on different planes: two, three, and one. Even though they are identical to each other, their different positions create a destabilising overall perspective. Only one of these arches leads to the night rooms, the places of intimacy. The others conceal a wardrobe, a washing machine, a boiler, a refrigerator, a pantry, and other technical devices. When people experience the house, they often open the various apertures and find various objects. At some point, they find the door with the pink glass handle and find themselves in a completely different space.
The daytime rooms are painted brown. In Persian, dust is called ‘khāk’, a term used to identify the soil. I tried to approach the colour of Persian khaki. The daytime rooms, which are also the public spaces of the house, reflect the idea of the cave and the refuge, recalling the beginnings of architecture and the Renaissance, evoking the explorations of the underground of ancient Rome by the great painters of that period. The rediscovery of the classic happened through the exploration of buried ruins, revealing magical and unexpected spaces, governed by decorative laws different from medieval sensitivity. The term ‘grotesque’ derives precisely from these underground explorations. This theme materialises in the most important aspect of these daytime rooms: the vault, which also defines the name of the project and refers to dust. The surfaces of the ceiling and high walls are covered with a rustic plaster that collects dust, usually associated with concerns of dirt and decay.
This research on the use of such plaster in a bourgeois house was made possible by a wise client [Massimiliano Beffa] who understood, despite a brief initial resistance, the cultural direction of my project. The use of dust in the project was crucial to discuss an alternative to modernity. Dust represents the opposite of modernity, whose main intent is the creation of sanitised, clear, and orderly spaces. White and clean houses and large glass windows were also the result of attempts to cure bodily diseases. However, this approach leads to a severe psychological problem, as it removes the deep connection that binds the individual to their environment.
The obsession with exposing everything can lead to superficial experiences, inhibiting the natural human attitude to find meaning in what is hidden (eros). This project emphasises the importance of dust and its role in architecture, challenging the modern approach to clean and exposed spaces and instead exalting the richness of stratified and interpreted spaces. Dust is not just a memory; it evokes a sense of tactility and shape influenced by the atmospheric. Moreover, the concept of dust becomes a metaphor for the journey. The journey involves dust and speaks of time: it is the sediment that settles on the skin when crossing a road, dust that comes from the earth and makes the skin weary from the journey.
But, at the same time, as I mentioned earlier, there is also another space in the house where everything is silky. This house contains opposing references, expressing a dualistic attitude towards information and the colours of the walls. There are two main colours: brown and pink. Brown, a primordial colour, represents the soil and dominates the public space of the daytime rooms. Pink, on the other hand, is found in the night rooms of the private space because it is the colour of flowers and skin. These two colours, although close in tone, are completely different from an anthropological perspective. Pink is associated with the ephemeral and the fleetingness of beauty. It also refers to the skin, which is beautiful but transitory. Interestingly, the term ‘pink’ emerged in the English language only in the 17th century. Brown, on the other hand, is relatively eternal, a colour that possesses the enduring life of the earth. Thus, the transition from the brown space to the pink space mirrors the metaphorical journey of man, reflecting an aesthetic experience of life.
This dualistic approach is also illustrated in the forms of architecture. The arch, inspired by the religious paintings of 14th-century Italy, refers to sexual themes as it resembles a large phallus. But there is more than one contradiction here: the phallus is associated with presence, yet, when the door is open, it becomes an absence in this space. Moreover, traditionally, a rustic wall should be below a smooth wall. In this work, however, I subverted this conventional order, celebrating the vault as the soil instead of the sky. This celebration involves the recognition of the importance of dust and the origins of architecture. The measure of this celebration is based on the golden ratio. By dividing the vertical surfaces through this classical order, I created an unusual inversion between the sky and the soil compared to palaces and ancient villas, where the vault presents celestial decorations with angels.
Architecture is more about the screenplay than individual things. It is like the story in a novel where discourse is fundamental. Rustic plaster can be found anywhere in the world. Even in London, many suburbs have houses with rustic plaster. The slit air vents, placed on openings that allude to a classical entablature, are obtained through a common industrial product. The assembly of the three parts in the form of a large trilithon, which evokes the schema of a pair of buttocks and suggests the pleasure of penetration into the narrow space of the hidden kitchen sacellum, is also a simple system. The wooden planks, reacting differently to light compared to the concrete of the surrounding floor, give the impression of being almost suspended (flying carpet), a reference to the Arabian tale of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. Once again, despite the relative simplicity of the interventions, the final result evokes intense emotions, and the anthropological aspects are evoked through the management of ordinary elements.
Another aspect of the house is the impression of symmetry. In reality, the layout is full of asymmetries due to the interaction of various subsystems, themselves symmetrical. For example, due to a slight shift in the room, the two windows of the lounge facing the street are not symmetrical with respect to the center of the room. However, this awkward placement takes on a different meaning through the definition of an axis of symmetry, marked by a prominent fissure that separates the two series of planks in the center of the wooden carpet, which thus becomes the new coordinator of the space.
On the opposite side of the room, the entrance opening appears carved into the base and breaks the continuity extending throughout the room, identifying a possible center. Inside it, continuing the axis of symmetry identified by the wooden carpet, a floor light line indicates the right rear arch of the kitchen, identifying a second center. This ambivalence between two systems of symmetry enriches the arrangement, making the image possess two centres. Finally, the position of the passage leading to the night rooms suggested a delicate treatment to construct a symmetrical vision of the hall, needing to stabilize its presence gently. Establishing complex relationships between the different previous situations was crucial, as every shift was limited by the boundaries of the apartment property.
It was a late afternoon, I sat on the grey wool sofa visible in the photo. Looking out towards the city, with the light fading slowly, I noticed for the first time a series of elongated arches on a bell tower, perfectly framed by the left window. It was a revealing moment: those same arches were present in the House of Dust, signs of a past that finally resurfaced, laden with memory and meaning.
Antonino Cardillo, House of Dust, lecture as part of ‘Intermediate Unit 2’, New Soft Room, AA School, 36 Bedford Square, London. Photograph: Marco Ponzianelli
AA School Event List: Term 1, Week 8, Monday 18–Saturday 23 November 2013, AA Weekly.