Build in a lunar landscape and immersed in the wild nature of Costa Paradiso, just in front of the Asinara Gulf, the Dome is a project by the “architect of the pyramids” Dante Bini who has designed it in the 1969 under commission of the director Michelangelo Antonioni; the famous film maker felt in love with the island’s landscapes on the set of his film “ Deserto Rosso” shot in the near Budelli, and then hired Bini, with his visionary and brilliant intuitions, to build a villa as tribute and a love nest for his partner Monica Vitti.
In the north of Sardinia there are many examples of architecture which aspire to disappear in the landscape, in full respect of the nature which is in itself a truly masterpiece; the Antonioni’s dome, even without disrupting the surrounding beauty, doesn’t want to blend in it creating an harmonious and poetic contrast.Viewed from above the Dome seams a planet and the vegetation a universe.
The dome is a piece of art which unites the vision of Dante Bini genius, interpreter of the roaring sixties with the Antonioni’s ideal conception who chose, as a stylistic attitude in his life and artistic journey, the measurement of the inner spaces instead of the reality’s one.
Dante Bini designed two domes: the first, and main one, in which Antonioni has lived with Monica Vitti while nearby there a second and smaller dome was built for Sergio Vacchi, a contemporary Italian painter.
The construction technique for the building of the Dome was innovative as its architecture: the Binishell technique consists of a only one pouring of concrete lifted and shaped by the air pressure in its interior, once the concrete is solidified it is possible to pierce the walls and create the overtures desired.
La Cupola is configured as a real futuristic monument, a great and enigmatic tribute from the artist to his lover, a symbol of an absolute perfection in contrast with the grandiose imperfection of the landscape: a master piece of the architecture of that times of architectural vanguard.
La Cupola has been the artists’ hideaway until the end of their love story; nowadays the villa is left to the mercy of the weather, whipped by the wind so that it took an alien appearance even more charming, like if it’s haunted by the expired love.
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