Tamedia Headquarters by Shigeru Ban II

New photos from Shigeru Ban´s construction site in Zurich, Switzerland:

A great detail: sheared node geometry, resulting from the chamfered corner of the building in plan.

Antonino Cardillo: Great Illusions

Since two weeks, the story of the "fake-architect" Antonino Cardillo is present in Italian and German language news (Falter, La Stapa, Neue Zürcher Zeitung).

During the last three years, after being shortlisted by the wallpaper magazine as one of the 30 most promising young architects, Cardillo created the self-image of being a successful, internationally active architect, present in all kinds of architecture blogs (e.g. decoist, archdaily, current) as well as in glossy magazines (e.g. H.O.M.E., build, Almanc of Architecture & Design). Since recenty in Der Spiegel, Cardilo never explicitly mentioned that all of those projects are hyperealistic renderings, but not existing buildings (except from one store in Milan). A nice detail of the story is that Cardillo proudly collects all articles about him on his website, even those that unmasked him.

I think Cardillo did a great job by revealing (maybe unintentional?) the underlying mechanisms of architectural glossy magazines and blogs, primarily obsessed with the need for new images, rather than with real architecture.


This case reminds me of the Swiss journalist Tom Kummer, who became a famous reporter with invented Hollywood star interviews ten years ago. In the documentary "Bad Boy Kummer", he emphasizes, that the real persons were just too boring, so he decided to spice the interviews with his own fantasy, quotes form philosophers etc. Just as Cardillo, Kummer blames the newspaper editors, that they all must have been aware of the fact, that his works were fake, but everybody tried to keep up appearances as long as possible. In contrary to Kummer, Cardillo became a star even without the borrowed fame of Hollywood celebrities.