Cardillo

architecture

Works

2024–2007

Body of work by Architect Antonino Cardillo consisting of a selection of project images and writings

Threshold of twilight

2024–2021

Series of projects on architecture as an interpretation, exploring the liminal spaces between light and darkness. These projects capture the fleeting moments when day transitions into night, evoking a sense of mystery that blurs the boundaries of reality

Architecture of a historiography

Architecture is a perceptual phenomenon. Its occurrence in the world is also the consequence of a historiography. A stratigraphy of interpretations extended over time that defines the existence of a work.

California Polytechnic State University, Castiglione delle Stiviere, 9 August 2024

Elogio del Grigio

Elogio del Grigio

The House of Ariadne near Lake Garda is in the form of a miniature palazzo, featuring a rectangular marble living room with a cuspidated ceiling.

Castiglione delle Stiviere, 12 October 2023

Conversation with Paolo Portoghesi

Through a small passage, I enter a long living room with a trompe‑l’oeil façade that frames—inside a perspective of arches—an imaginary landscape.

Calcata, 22 May 2023

Mammacaura

Mammacaura

The embarcadero for the Stagnone Lagoon and the island of Motya at the Ettore and Infersa Salt Pans.

Saline Ettore e Infersa, Marsala, 16 May 2021

Evocation

2019–2014

Series of projects on architecture as a sacred dimension, conjuring memories, emotions and cultural references. These projects draw inspiration from music and cinema, resonating with nostalgia, symbolism and a connection with the depths of the human psyche

A synchronicity of cultures and civilisations

These works explore the idea of a sacred universe, where cultures and civilisations, ancient and recent, come together in singularities that tell of how the Psyche has diversified and projected its contents in the different eras and different places of the world.

Dessau Institute of Architecture, Dessau, 13 November 2019

The making of Rome’s Off Club

According to Jung, the alchemical process of the philosopher’s stone that led to gold was the unconscious projection of an instance of spiritual and therefore psychological transformation.⁠

Royal College of Art, London, 22 January 2019

Off Club

Off Club

The nightclub Off Club in Casal Bertone with golden rough plaster vault and black iconostasis with arches.

Off Club, Rome, 21 June 2018

Punta tipa

My youth was populated with symbols which came from an ancient past. My imagination was also moulded by the desires of people that inhabited the island long time ago.

ODDA, New York, 1 September 2016

Specus Corallii

Specus Corallii

The oratory Sala Laurentina of the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo with green archway, pink rough plaster and silver rectangle of limestone.

Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, Trapani, 27 August 2016

References

Each act of beauty is a gentle message toward death. Any act of beauty is a shard of love en route for a stranger. Any fragment of past beautiness is part of our memory, giving sense to the permanence of the mankind on the Earth. Thus references can become testimonials of love, beyond the death.

Baunetzwoche, Berlin, 26 March 2015

Min at the Soane

Min at the Soane

Series of seven sculptures which relate the arch to the phallus part of the LDF exhibition Space and Light at Sir John Soane’s Museum

Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 13 September 2014

Ancestral images

2017–2013

Series of projects on architecture as a representation of archetypes, investigating colour as a narrative of the primordial. These projects weave hues and textures into spatial compositions that refer to ancient rituals, mythologies and collective memory

Vaults, grottoes, arches and polychromy

The ‘words’ Vault, Grotto and Arch still inhabit our imagination. They embody archetypes that still move us today. According to Heidegger, “language is the house of the Being”, so, its happening in time could reveal to us the hidden structure of that historicity that it makes possible.

Heinze ArchitekTOUR, Berlin, 23 November 2017

Colour as a Narrative

Colour as a Narrative

The perfume shop Illuminum on Dover Street in Mayfair ward with grey rough plaster grotto and silk carpet plus olfactory glass bowls.

Illuminum Fragrance, London, 26 April 2015

Crepuscular Green

Crepuscular Green

The Mondrian Suite art gallery on Via dei Piceni in Rione San Lorenzo with golden green rough plaster and arched mirror altar with black trumpets lamps.

Mondrian Suite, Rome, 29 April 2014

The alternative

I work alone. At a bench overlooking a valley; biding my time in the streets. Elsewhere, in a park, listening to the rippling waters of a fountain late at night; searching for feelings. Crawling toward the places where architecture lies asleep. Architecture is an idea and ideas are tardy; they are waiting for you on a lazy afternoon, wandering somewhere.

AA School, London, 18 November 2013

House of Dust

House of Dust

The apartment near to Via Veneto and Villa Borghese, with brown rough plaster and series of pink arched doors.

Rome, 16 April 2013

Architecture is dust

Architecture is dust. Dust that becomes form, Dust transfigured by the mind.

Rome, 16 April 2013

Wallpaper

2011–2007

Series of projects on architecture as an insertion, challenging conventional notions of surface and ornament. These projects where the walls become protagonists treat the surfaces as paintings, blurring the line between architecture and art

Postmodern Cafe

Postmodern Cafe

The commissioned by Wallpaper* editor-at-large Suzanne Trocmé London Design Festival entrance to the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–90’.

London Design Festival, London, 6 September 2011

The Inexact Quality

The Inexact Quality

A two-level wooden residential building on a trapezoidal plot commissioned by construction company Nomura Koumuten overlooking Osaka Bay.

Nomura Koumuten, Takarazuka, 19 February 2011

Akin to a Cinema Set

Akin to a Cinema Set

The commissioned by Wallpaper* editor-at-large Suzanne Trocmé Sergio Rossi shoe store in Brera district with blue background, grey carpet, timber frame enclosure, fluorescent tubes and Joe Colombo’s lamps.

Sergio Rossi, Milan, 15 April 2010

House for Wallpaper

House for Wallpaper*

The Wallpaper* architects directory model house exhibited in the Berlin Neues Museum and the Rotterdam Chabot Museum, with vault, courtyard and golden plaster.

Wallpaper*, Berlin/Rotterdam, 6 April 2009

Comment

In the past 10 years the ‘modern’ has been reinstated by fashion, design, interiors, cinema and music. It has become the dominant aesthetic category, undergoing at the same time a continuous erosion of meaning.

Blueprint, London, 1 July 2007

Remote places

2017–2007

Series of projects on architecture as concealed or simulated reality, expanding the boundaries of the imagination. These projects defy gravity, logic and context, inviting us to question our perception of space and place

Reality doesn’t exist

If you have power, you can influence other people. If you love, you destroy yourself. From a psychological point of view, love is a very dangerous disease. Love is merely an illusion. Just like architecture: merely an illusion! But at the same time, love is more real than reality.

DEAR Magazin, Berlin, 1 April 2017

Purple House

Purple House

The seventh instalment in the ‘For No One’ collection, this expressionistic abode of sculpture embarks on a voyage into the legacy of the Normans. It engages with light to manipulate perception, offering an exploration of history.

Pembrokeshire, 1 June 2011

Architecture and reverberation

Architecture fascinates when it contains in itself ‘remote places’, where the separation, rather than physical, becomes an expression of the unknown, of the unreal, in short of dreams.

Tasarim, Istanbul, 1 August 2009

House of Twelve

House of Twelve

The sixth instalment in the ‘For No One’ collection, this architectural project embarks on a journey into the ruins of ancient Rome. It engages with light to manipulate perception, proposing an exploration of the progressive mutation of contemporary ideas and those of late antiquity.

Melbourne, 1 May 2009

Rome and Hadrian’s Villa

Maybe the city is a gigantic pack of cards, a corrupt deck, and if history were linear, clear and intelligible, the art within it would have no reason to exist. Beauty always has a bastard quality and sometimes the most profound, the truest art lies in the distortion of reality.

Design Today, New Delhi, 1 February 2009

Concrete Moon House

Concrete Moon House

The fifth instalment in the ‘For No One’ collection, this dwelling embarks on a voyage into the realm of fear and unconfessed desires. It engages with light to manipulate perception, proposing an exploration of diverse formal identities.

Melbourne, 1 November 2008

Max's House in a Small Lake

Max’s House in a Small Lake

The fourth instalment in the ‘For No One’ collection, this lakeside retreat embarks on a journey into the unpredictability of reality. It engages with light to manipulate perception, proposing an exploration of the transfiguration of a boat set against the wooded banks of a little lake.

Nimes, 1 July 2008

House of Convexities

House of Convexities

The third instalment in the ‘For No One’ collection, this structure embarks on a voyage into the realm of transition and movement. It engages with light to manipulate perception, proposing an exploration of the changing colours of the celestial hemisphere.

Barcelona, 1 March 2008

Vaulted House

Vaulted House

The second instalment in the ‘For No One’ collection, this tower-like dwelling embarks on a journey into the realm of silence and sound. It engages with light to manipulate perception, proposing an exploration of the mutable architecture articulated by the passing time.

Parma, 1 January 2008

Egypt and immortality lost

Whether or not Egyptians were aware of it, here History was undoubtedly born. But its opposite was also born, namely the possibility of changing the truth by re‑writing history.

Ulisse, Alitalia, Rome, 1 November 2007

Ellipse 1501 House

Ellipse 1501 House

The first instalment in the ‘For No One’ collection, this elliptical tower embarks on a voyage into the realm of geometry and light. It engages with light to manipulate perception, proposing an exploration of the mutable architecture and its relationship with the changing sky.

Rome, 25 March 2007