The architectonic complex is born out of the city and from the urban road system grows its intricate sequence of multiple pathways, whose development on the sea structures the diverse forms of the composition. These designs which curve following the wind, in the same way as the medieval streets of the cities of the sea, structure and condition the form of the buildings so as to realise the functional content of the complex. Pub, restaurant, bar, bookshop, discothèque, terrace and open theatre appear distinguishable but interconnected according to an “urban” poetry that makes a complex stratification of signs: bow-windows, wharves, a glass tower, several paper spheres, a complex polyhedron, a jetty for small boats, a red house on stilts, the capsized hull of a large vessel, successions of sharp triangular skylights, a long straight grey wall, a soft curving beach. Each form, however, appears transfigured and its being in the complex renders it something else, acquiring for it new meanings. Each part resonates in another constructing a stratified reality, as in an ancient village where life and time leave tracks on the ground.

2002 © Antonino Cardillo