Bento Architecture at the Festival des Cabanes at Villa Medici in Rome

On the occasion of the fifth edition of the Festival des Cabanes, to be held from May 21 to September 28, 2026 in Rome, the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris and Wallonie-Bruxelles Architectures are joining forces with the Villa Medici to support the production and dissemination of a project emerging from the French-speaking Belgian architectural scene: Il Duomo Invertito, conceived by the Brussels-based office Bento.

Conceived as an open-air experimental laboratory, the Festival des Cabanes takes over the Villa’s historic gardens to explore the relationships between architecture, landscape, and ecology through lightweight, reversible, and engaged structures.

Through the figure of the cabin, the festival invites architects, artists, and designers to question contemporary ways of inhabiting space, exploring forms that are light, reversible, and attentive to environmental concerns. The 2026 edition brings together six original installations, made of wood, metal, or reclaimed materials, accompanied by a multidisciplinary artistic program.

Il Duomo Invertito by Bento

Among the six installations presented this year, Il Duomo Invertito, designed by Bento Architecture, offers a sensitive and critical reinterpretation of an emblematic figure in architectural history: the dome. While this silhouette is inseparable from the landscape of the Eternal City, it is here deliberately inverted, deconstructed, and lightened. Mineral monumentality gives way to a suspended wooden framework, almost immaterial, which no longer imposes itself on the ground but floats in space, offering visitors a fragile shelter at the heart of the ruins.

Faithful to its experimental approach, Bento Architecture places bio-based materials at the core of the project. The filigree structure is composed of broom handles assembled using demountable steel plates, designed to facilitate reuse and the future evolution of the installation. The dome rests on a primary wooden framework, reinforced with steel, and clad with mycelium tiles—a living material derived from the root network of fungi, fully compostable and intended to return to the earth.

Credits

Co-produced by the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris, the installation extends the research initiated during its recent participation in the Venice Architecture Biennale and will be presented in Paris in 2027.

Design
Bento Architecture: Corentin Dalon, Charles Palliez, Florian Mahieu, Corentin Mahieu
with Quentin Bourguignon

Fabrication, assembly
Bento Architecture, Quentin Bourguignon, Baptiste Chatenet, Sven Dutrieux, François Willemarck

Structure
Atelier PoCo | Poésie Constructive

Documents