Cardillo

architecture

House of Dust

Rome,

Project for the apartment near to Via Veneto and Villa Borghese, with brown rough plaster and series of pink arched doors

House of Dust

Interpretation

Colour itself is a degree of darkness (σκιερόν). — 

In this house classical orders and golden proportions celebrate dust. A grey base supports a ceiling of rustic plaster of the colour of the bare earth: craving for primordial caverns, for Renaissance grotesques, for baroque nymphaeums in Doria Pamphilj, for faintly Liberty façades in the streets off Via Veneto. A sequence of compressions and dilatations makes up the space of the house. On the walls, passages and windows appear, now dug out of the base, now like carvings in a baguette. A series of arches, memories of Trecento Italian painting, disguises doors and cupboards. Among these, one studded with a pink glass doorknob introduces the intimate rooms, which too are distinguished by the palest pink on the walls: yearning for dawns and flowers, the colour of beauty, the colour of beauty that dies.

This text was first published on ,[↗] London, .

Reference

  • , Zur Farbenlehre, J.G. Cotta, Tübingen, 1810; En. ed. Charles Lock Eastlake [1840], , M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1970, p. 31.

Data

  • Time: March–Oct. 2012 (design), Nov. 2012–March 2013 (construction), March–April 2013 (photography), May 2013 (poem), June 2013 (text)
  • Place: Ludovisi, Rome, Italy
  • Area: 115 m² (one storey)
  • Typology: apartment
House of Dust
House of Dust
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House of Dust
House of Dust
House of Dust
House of Dust

Credits

  • Architecture, construction management: Antonino Cardillo
  • Client: Massimiliano Beffa
  • Building contractor: Galliani & Giorgetti
  • Masonry: Ripan Michele
  • Plaster: Julian Paraschiv
  • Logistics: Giorgio Giorgetti
  • Painting: Petrica Rotaru
  • Electrical system: Luca Camai
  • Plumbing, clima system: Emiliano Proietto
  • Cement: Elio Martorana, Michele Martorana
  • Parquet: Style Maison
  • Marbles, stones: Daniele Ghirardi (Ghirardi Stone Contractor)
  • Curtains: Pasquale Lo Guercio
  • Tables design: Antonino Cardillo
  • Chair design: Kazuhide Takahama
  • Sofa design: Piero Lissoni
  • Bookcase design: Giuseppe Bavuso
  • Handle: GIL (via Handles Rome)
  • Lamps: Armand Darot
  • Photography, poem, text: Antonino Cardillo
  • Translation: Charles Searson
  • Thanks to Ana Araujo

Poem

Architecture is dust.

Dust that becomes form,

Dust transfigured by the mind.

Dust is memory so dust is also death.

Ancestral memory of death,

Dust refers to the beginnings.

That modernity that disowns sediment,

That shaves walls, that sanitises space;

That modernity that disowns dust,

Disowns even death.

Deprived of memory,

And so slave to a credible youth,

Ignoring its end, it repeats itself;

Without end.

In this house classical orders

And golden proportions celebrate dust:

Angels and choirs have abandoned Heaven,

And Heaven has adorned itself with earth.

, House of Dust, Rome, , p. 7.

Anthology

2018–2013

The alienation of the material using the devices of color and texture surprises and, at the same time, generates a feeling of security.

Thinking Color in Space: Positions, Projects, Potentials, Birkhäuser, Berlin/Boston, Dec. 2018, p. 342. (de, en)

His understanding of space and balance has resulted in some of the most influential interiors of recent times.

atelierlumira.com, Sydney, 22 Jan. 2018. (en)

Cardillo is the guy behind one of our favorite interiors projects in recent memory, the House of Dust.

sightunseen.com, New York, 22 April 2017. (en)

In 2012, at the request of Massimiliano Beffa, his former partner, Antonino Cardillo revisited his Rome apartment and designed the House of Dust, a jewel of contemporary architecture that captured the attention of his entire profession, as evidenced by the many articles published on his work by Dezeen, Architects’ Journal Specification and even The Journal of Architecture.

promostyl.com, Paris, 24 Nov. 2017. (en)

Cardillo links shadows and mysteries to the creation of a sense of eroticism.

Being in shape / shaping environments, thesis, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, The Hague, May 2015. (en)

A new author who has carved out a place entirely his own in the history of this discipline within just a few years.

‘Stanze. Altre Filosofie dell’Abitare’ [exhibition], XXI Triennale, Milan, April 2016. (en, it)

A dimension seemingly out of time, which here seems to have stopped or never spent, suspended, immobile.

Abitare la Terra, no. 37, dir. Paolo Portoghesi, Rome, March 2015, p. 50. (en, it)

(IT)

Antonino Cardillo focusses on the potential of the ceiling.

Living, no. 1/2, Corriere della Sera, Milan, Feb. 2015, p. 13. (it)

It instantly brought back memories of the best postmodern, neoclassical architecture that I was revisiting at the time—Bofill, Moneo, Tusquets—but with a more personal and very contemporary view.

Room: Inside Contemporary Interiors, Phaidon, London, Oct. 2014, p. 64. (en, it)

(HE)

Cardillo breaks boundaries, shatters familiar patterns and infuses his works with a unique individual character with a new language based on classical principles. However, it is quite clear that this new aesthetic language is not easy to digest and understand, and is not intended for everyone, it is very far from the mainstream, deep, different and different, in the way of groundbreaking works.

Trend, no. 141, Tel Aviv, March 2014, p. 180. (he)

It is purposely reminiscent of all kinds of subliminal historical references, in particular the vault of very early architecture.

How to Spend It, Financial Times, London, March 2014, p. 71. (en)

 (DE)

The architect has managed to create a flat with solid materials […] that processes the history of architecture and the very particular history of the city of Rome in its own unique way.

AIT Magazin, No. 3/14, Leinfelden‑Echterdingen, March 2014, pp. 120‑125. (de)

In connecting architecture to the realm of the haptic, both on a more tactile, micro scale (ceiling) and on a more visual, macro scale (arches), Cardillo’s architecture promotes the sensorial mobilisation envisioned by Benjamin as a potential force for social/political transformation. It also responds to Rilke’s call for an intensification of the senses as the only possible antidote to human suffering and violence. It is a hopeful piece that suggests that architecture still holds the power to awaken our senses and emotions for a deeper, more intimate and fulfilling engagement with the world.

The Journal of Architecture, vol. 19, no. 1, RIBA, London, Jan. 2014, p. 15. (en)

[↗]

Doing a house up entirely in earth tones would be pretty ill-advised 99 percent of the time, but in the right hands the effect can be nothing short of arresting.

curbed.com, New York, 20 Dec. 2013. (en)

In place of abundant natural light and designer furnishings are gloomy cavernous spaces characterized by a grainy ceiling of pozzolanic plaster, tinted the colour of dust.

Frame, no. 95, Amsterdam, Nov. 2013, p. 58. (en)

(ES)

The Sicilian architect uses colour to illustrate the path of humanity: “from the grotto to the rose” as the maximum expression of the sublime.

Folio, vol. 4, Mexico City, Oct. 2013, p. 42. (es)

An apartment interior in Rome’s Via Veneto, glamorised by Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the House of Dust serves as an ideal springboard for fanciful lighting effects and architectural narrative.

Architects’ Journal Specification, London, Oct. 2013, pp. 4, 50‑55, cover. (en)

This is a courageous project with a fresh aesthetic and a unique vision. It’s the kind of interior that creates new trends, memes and movements.

yellowtrace.com.au, Sydney, 27 Sept. 2013. (en)

As one of the world’s most exciting architects, Antonino Cardillo draws on classical and ancient architectural forms to create spaces that feel entirely new.

mroakleysmith.com, Sydney, Aug. 2013. (en)

For the architect, architecture becomes interesting where it “becomes invisible or hides something” and exists on the border “to the dream”—with his House of Dust he has precisely realised this into reality.

designlines.de, BauNetz, Berlin, 13 Aug. 2013. (de, en, it)

[↗]

Italian architect Antonino Cardillo used roughly textured plaster to create lumpy brown surfaces across the upper walls and ceilings of this apartment in Rome.

dezeen.com, London, 5 Aug. 2013. (en)

A side entrance reveals a hall that, like a Greek mask suddenly worn by the visitor, projects and draws attention onto two tapered windows: a pair of eyes on the world.

Casamica, no. 3/13, Corriere della Sera, Milan, June 2013, p. 77. (en, it)

Exhibitions

2023–2013

Gaia Maria Lombardo (cur.)

At the invitation of curator Gaia Maria Lombardo, Cardillo guided the visitors through the House of Dust, part of the ‘Open House Rome 2023’ program. The work also celebrates the opening day of the Festival by also hosting the first of nine ‘Nine by Night’ aperitifs.

Open City, Rome, .

Gaia Maria Lombardo (cur.)

At the invitation of curator Gaia Maria Lombardo, Alfredo Vattimo’s guided tours of the House of Dust, part of the ‘Open House Roma 2021’ program.

Open City, Rome, .

Diego Grammatico (cur.)

At the invitation of curator Diego Grammatico, Cardillo talked about his relationship between video games and architecture in the conference ‘From Zak McKracken to House of Dust’, part of a panel for the Rome Video Game Lab festival of the Istituto Luce at the Cinecittà Studios.

Istituto Luce Cinecittà, Rome, .

Beppe Finessi (cur.)

The curator Beppe Finessi exhibited the House of Dust among the fifty representative Italian interior architecture projects from 1925 to 2016, part of the ‘Rooms. Novel Living Concepts’ exhibition at the Palazzo dell’Arte of the Triennale di Milano.

Palazzo dell’Arte, Triennale di Milano, Milan, .

Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia (cur.)

At the invitation of Professors Ana Araujo and Takero Shimazaki, and student Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia, Cardillo spoke about the House of Dust, part of the Intermediate Unit 2 course of the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

AA School, London, .

Publications

2024–2013 (selected)