Michelangelo Antonioni's Dome Vandalized.

In recent days, the Dome, a work by architect Dante Bini, built in the early 1970s for director Michelangelo Antonioni that is located in Sardinia, nestled in the Costa Paradiso landscape, was vandalized. The curved glass window and part of the architecture’s exterior wall were spray-painted. The architecture festival Abitare la Vacanza has informed the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio of the Provinces of Sassari and Nuoro of the serious episode, which is detrimental to the modern architectural heritage. The festival has placed the enhancement of architecture at the three sites (Colletta di Castelbianco in Liguria, Baratti in Tuscany, Costa Paradiso in Sardinia) including those works such as Bini’s experimental architecture at the center of the program.

Since 2015, the Dome, as it is called in common parlance, has been subject to the Declaration of Cultural Interest pursuant to Legislative Decree No. 42/04 as amended, Art. 10, paragraph 3, letter de artt.13 and 14, in 2015 which states: the purpose of this declaration is the protection of the property and its preservation from transformations and improper uses. Any changes must have the character of reversibility and/or add to the existing architecture without altering its language and its own peculiar character.

“The dome is a unique work,” said Carlo Dusi, among Dante Bini’s leading experts, “the result of a unique conjunction between Antonioni’s artistic sensibility and Dante Bini’s innovative architectural research in an exceptional place. It condenses what is most authentic the effervescent culture of the 1970s was elaborating. It is Architecture, a monument. Its loss is not acceptable.”

The state of advanced degradation in which the work is in seems to highlight that the necessary measures to protect the property, which is an asset of extraordinary importance precisely because of its technical-constructive characteristics, constituting a unicum in the panorama of twentieth-century architecture, have not been implemented.

The Cupola project was born in 1964 when the director was in Sardinia, where he met an entrepreneur who was buying land by the sea to build a tourist village. Antonioni thus discovered the place that is now called Costa Paradiso and chose it to build his summer home. In 1968 his partner Monica Vitti meets an architect who tells her about the Binishell project: a dome completed in a single concrete casting inflated and raised thanks to an inner tube. Vitti is so fascinated by this project that she talks about it with Antonioni, who entrusts Bini with the design of the house in Sardinia. Antonioni’s dome became a piece of the island’s history: in 2014, architect Rem Koolhaas, curator of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, called it “one of the best architectures of the last hundred years.”

The Abitare la Vacanza festival says it has involved institutions in the preservation and enhancement of modern architecture, fostering dialogues between the Superintendency and local actors. And it believes that a change of course is needed so that Antonioni’s Dome is also recognized as a cultural asset by the community. In this sense, he invites the Costa Paradiso Territorial Community and the Municipality of Trinità d’Agultu to become promoters, so that a process of conservation and enhancement of the Dome can start from the territory.

Michelangelo Antonioni's Dome Vandalized.

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.