The symmetry of the night

Asian Fusion, Mixology and Lounge: a restaurant as a physical and psychological trip.

A dark paradise of shadows, mirrors, and symmetries. With his latest creation, a restaurant in Rome, Antonino Cardillo opens another chapter in his epic architectural narrative. Once again, he draws users into his world of thoughts, marked by intimacy, illusion, and order. A preliminary pinnacle in the still young body of work of the architect.

The question of the reality of his projects does not arise for Antonino Cardillo: the Here and Now is just one of many levels for the Italian architect. His works are a conglomerate of myths, fairy tales, and mental images from different epochs and cultures. He wants to create an architecture of the unconscious, inspired by one of his great masters, the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung.

Entering the Off Club is like embarking on a geological and sensory expedition. Through three large doors, visitors enter from Via di Casal Bertone into the restaurant, which is also a bar. As with his other works, the House of Dust or the Specus Corallii, Cardillo envelops his architecture in coloured pozzolan plaster, contrasting it with shiny copper, dark mirrors, and black granite. An endless play of light and shadow. The enveloping effect of this wondrous surface mixture immediately captivates the visitor, drawing them into Antonino Cardillo’s world.

The dining room breaks in two halves in the middle: a vertical shift separates the restaurant from the bar. The transition resembles a tectonic fault, where part of the floor plate has been raised by a few metres. Naturally, the symmetry is maintained: on both sides, a black granite bar over seven metres long forms the spatial epicentre. They are complemented by other geometrically strict figures – arches, rhombuses, triangles, and discs that illuminate, reflect, and cut through the space, as if hinting at an archaic ritual. Cardillo, like few others, succeeds with his architecture in involving the user both physically and psychologically in his world of thoughts. A journey to the borderland of reality and illusion – worth embarking on.