Cardillo

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Impostor: Roman Ruins

Hamburg,


Cover story with a field investigation by Susanne Beyer on the Houses for No One by architect Antonino Cardillo for the magazine Der Spiegel




Susanne Beyer, 2012: Hochstapler. Römische Ruinen (Der Spiegel).



Main article


Modern architecture is almost unimaginable without computer programs; architects design buildings on screens and submit animated representations of their projects to competitions. The young Italian architect Antonino Cardillo took advantage of the fact that fiction and reality are becoming increasingly indistinguishable. Der Spiegel discovered that Cardillo had sent images of supposedly built buildings to architectural magazines, creating the impression that the houses had actually been constructed. However, these existed only virtually. Some professional magazines fell for the trick and published the renderings [computer-generated imagery]. Editor Susanne Beyer visited Cardillo in Rome and took his confession. “Yes”, he admitted, “I did it; I saw no other way to become known.” Deceit and deception were initially rewarded: the magazine Wallpaper* placed Cardillo on their list of the world’s 30 most important young architects three years ago.

Main article, Der Spiegel 27/2012

Cardillo, Beyer in Rome, ‘Main article’, Der Spiegel, No. 27/2012.




Roman Ruins


A young Italian architect is celebrated in international magazines for his buildings. That was premature. The story of an almost successful staging.


When Felix Krull was young, he pondered for a long time whether he should view the world as small or large. According to his “nature”, he later in life “considered the world to be a great and infinitely alluring phenomenon.” He became the happiest impostor in literary history. Thomas Mann’s novel The Confessions of Felix Krull is also a parody of artistry. Because the artist, as Mann thought, is always also a pretender. His talent—initially just a claim.

Felix Krull was courteous, charming, and elegant. And, yes, also: extremely good-looking. Women and men succumbed to him, enjoying being deceived by him. And like his father, the manufacturer of the sparkling wine brand “Loreley Extra Cuvée”, Felix Krull liked comfort, his world was one of “airy curtains” and the doorbell playing Freuet euch des Lebens [J. Strauss II, Enjoy Life]. Felix Krull is lightness.

However, Thomas Mann found it difficult to invent the happy Krull. He worked on the novel for 50 years, but it remained unfinished. Sometimes literature resists. And sometimes reality is more inventive.

Three years ago, architect Antonino Cardillo was named by Wallpaper, a leading magazine for architecture and design, as one of the 30 most important young architects worldwide.

Since then, he has also frequently appeared prominently in other magazines. The architecture magazine build spoke with him and inquired whether it was difficult to communicate with clients about “the qualities of future designs.” [The book] Houses introduced Cardillo’s building Ellipse 1501 “completed in 2007”: “Near a rocky hill, behind a pine forest, a tower-like house appears.” Such talent is worth getting to know.

Anyone who searches the internet for the talented Mr. Cardillo finds his homepage. It states that he was born in Sicily. He has taught in London, at Chelsea College of Art and Design. He works with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. There is also a portrait of him, a handsome man in his mid-thirties. “Active worldwide”, it reads.

And Mr. Cardillo presents many houses on this homepage, successful, expressive, imposing. A few, it is stated, are in Italy and others in Spain or Australia. Only the clients remain secret, naturally, they are private houses. The photographer of all these high-resolution images is always the same: the talented Mr. Cardillo.

Following Cardillo’s traces in reality is not quite easy. If you inquire via email at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London about his teaching, you will receive a friendly response. “We have no one who remembers him. However, many lecturers teach here, some stay only for a few hours. It might be better if you contact Antonino Cardillo directly?”

An excellent idea. His email address is on his website. Would he be willing to give an interview about himself and his work? The answer comes 23 minutes later: “Yes.” Would it be possible to visit him in Rome, in his office? Again, he is quick: He does not have an office in the traditional sense, but a meeting in a café opposite the Colosseum is possible.

A few days later, he writes again: He has designed an apartment in Rome for a friend, and the friend has offered to hold the interview there.

It is more difficult to get appointments with other “globally active” architects. Assistants respond. Cardillo writes himself, straightforward and pleasant.

The apartment is located above the Trastevere district on a hill. Antonino Cardillo opens the door, how pleasant, no assistants constantly interrupting. Cardillo looks fantastic, his eyes gaze melancholically. He politely invites into the apartment, a slight nod of the head.

Two tiny rooms, kitchen, and bathroom. The handsome Mr. Cardillo offers a tour, naturally gladly, it does not take long.

Many walls serve as cupboards at the same time—indeed. A cupboard in the bedroom has cords instead of handles. Cardillo says the new and the old come together in this apartment “without drama”, without tension. He has particularly thought about light and shadow. He points to the neon tubes [fluorescent lamp]. The neon tubes create neon light. Extraordinary. They cost 9 euros each at the hardware store.

He invites into the living room. There stands a nicely painted blue wallpaper table. Mr. Cardillo speaks softly, but he is sure of what he says.

The most important thing to him is architectural history, he emphasises. When building, however, he would never explicitly cite past epochs, as postmodern architects have done; they must be abstract references, with ‘light chambers’, for example, it is possible to allude to the Baroque. He further explains that he considers postmodern aesthetics to be misleading, and he is also disappointed by the development of other architects, such as the deconstructivist Frank O. Gehry. In the 1980s, Gehry still designed magnificent sculptural buildings, but then he hired too many people, and now his architecture is commonplace.

It is pleasant to listen to Mr. Cardillo, who has hired no one. A neon tube flickers, perhaps it needs to be replaced soon. The living room here is pretty but small. Mr. Cardillo’s houses on the internet appear different. Wide, tall, majestic.

The magazine H.O.M.E. published an eleven-page article about one of these magnificent buildings. A “House like a Dance”, it is called, ”surrounded by fields.” ”The young Italian architect Antonino Cardillo built the House of Convexities near Barcelona”—“Flamenco in stone.”

This article also mentions the architect’s appearance: ”extremely handsome.” The name of the client is not mentioned, but it is learned that he is a composer—“with a great interest in Mediterranean music.”

Here in the apartment in Rome, soft music is also playing. At some point, an hour passes. Now comes the next question. Mr. Cardillo looks at the table.

“It is hard to distinguish on your homepage which of your projects have actually been realised?”

Cardillo takes a sip of water. He continues to look at the table. Then he smiles and says: “I proceeded like the Suprematists, the Futurists. You see, I came here to Rome and had no contacts, but I wanted to realise my ideas.” Antonino Cardillo hesitates now. It is the first time. He looks up from the table. It is hot, the heat of the city is also felt here on the hill. Then he says it: “Well, these houses do not exist. Only one in Japan. But the others are computer images.”

Mr. Cardillo, how is it that the magazines give the impression that the houses really exist?

“I let them believe it. There were rarely personal contacts. Many things happened over the internet, through chats. And, yes, I partly invented information. Magazines want to publish projects that have been realised. I still wanted to show how I imagine houses. Why should an idea be lost just because there is no client?”

He could have participated in competitions.

“Without connections?”, he asks. “And if I had succeeded, compromises would have emerged.”

He continues, saying he does not feel entirely good about it all.

“Just see it as a literary narrative”, says Mr. Cardillo now, “a fairy tale. It is not important that the events actually happened. What matters is bringing an idea into the world. And it worked, I now receive commissions. The house in Japan, the store in Milan by Sergio Rossi, which you see on my homepage, really exist.”

But how did he live all those years?

He does not answer that, instead he speaks again a lot about modernity, futurism, and postmodernism.

He must have lived off something? Cardillo smiles again. Now it goes quickly, he seems almost relieved. “I wrote doctoral theses.” He adds: “I helped other people write their doctoral theses.”

After the confession, Cardillo is exhausted. It is evening. He has talked for two hours. He turns off the light in the unfamiliar apartment and heads down into the city. The poet Friedrich Hebbel wrote about Rome: “In the moonlight twilight, I like to look / at the crumbling ruins of the grey eternal city / which serve as a measure of its greatness, / where man may learn to measure himself.”

Thomas Mann imagined Felix Krull as a Narcissus, seeking reflections of himself and avoiding the wounds caused by confrontation with reality. Antonino Cardillo says about himself that the houses he commissioned for himself are, in some ways, reflections. Once, when he looked at the pictures, he was startled. “As if I were looking into my own abyss.”