Elegy in grey

Residential House in Lombardy by Antonino Cardillo.

When a philosopher is quoted in an architectural description, it naturally brings to mind the Wittgenstein House in Vienna. Ludwig Wittgenstein designed it together with Paul Engelmann for his sister, Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein. They succeeded in meticulously concretising Wittgenstein’s philosophical ideas. However, Antonino Cardillo (Trapani) does not refer to Wittgenstein at all in his latest project in Castiglione delle Stiviere. Instead, he recalls Hegel’s “grey in grey” as the sphere of knowledge. The residential house he has built for a family of three, with its angular and austere appearance, nevertheless evokes thoughts of the house in Vienna, at least externally.

Castiglione delle Stiviere is a small Lombard town in the province of Mantua, approximately fifteen kilometres south of Lake Garda. The newly constructed building, completed in 2023, is situated in a hilly single-family residential area northeast of the town centre, occupying a corner plot. Cardillo describes the building as a “miniature palazzo,” which is quite fitting given its floor area of more than 200 square metres. Nevertheless, the volume, whose ground floor directly adjoins the neighbouring building, initially appears modest. This effect is particularly contributed to by the few, primarily vertically oriented window openings, which blur the scale. In these, one might also recognise an echo of the Wittgenstein House.

Given the sparse exterior photographs, one must look at the floor plans to comprehend the building’s volume. The ground floor, which includes a garage, runs parallel to the street but occupies only part of the plot. The upper floor is positioned perpendicularly, extending into the depth of the site and slightly recessed on the base. The symmetry of the west façade accentuates the two-storey central section of the house. The surrounding terrace of the upper floor, however, is not visible from the street. Cardillo thus aptly addresses the ambiguity of a “grey in grey” with such subtle manipulations.

The real surprise, however, awaits inside. While the ground floor, with windows only to the west, feels quite cavernous, the upper floor features a five-and-a-half-metre-high living hall with an open hipped roof. The lower part of this space is entirely clad in marble, while the ceiling is made of rough sprayed plaster. Combined with the kitchen set behind a curved wall and the granite dining table, this setting evokes a stage design.

For Cardillo, this hall also notably references non-Western influences from Marrakech to Istanbul. The arched doors throughout the house, on the other hand, align more with European traditions. Thus, in spatial terms as well, it is an architecture full of ambiguity.