Mario Botta In an era when many architects explore complex forms and lightweight materials, Mario Botta has created some of the world’s most moving architecture based upon precise, simple volumes created out of masonry: brick, concrete and stone. Few, if any, other living architects employ brick as adeptly as Botta. Early in his career, Botta was exposed to three great architects who would be lasting influences upon him. From 1965-69, he studied at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice (IUAV) where Carlo Scarpa was one of his thesis advisors. In 1965, he worked as an assistant in the atelier of Le Corbusier in Venice on the unrealized New Hospital of Venice (1964-65). In 1969, he met Louis Kahn and worked on Kahn’s unbuilt Palazzo dei Congressi (1968-74) in Venice. Of the three, Botta’s work appears, generally, to relate most closely to Kahn’s yet Botta’s rich, patterned surfaces seem to reflect the influence of Scarpa who embraced ornament. Born in 1943 in Mendrisio, in Italian speaking Switzerland, Botta feels close ties with Italy, which geographically surrounds his Ticino region on three sides. He established his own firm in Lugano, Switzerland in 1969 and today his office occupies a building he designed in that city (1985-90). Architecturally speaking, Botta’s name has become synonymous with the Ticino in the same way that Andrea Palladio’s has with the Veneto. Almost all of his early work is in this area and, along with projects elsewhere in Europe and in Asia, he continues to build locally. Like the early practices of many architects, most of his early assignments were houses. Their extraordinary designs brought him international prominence and prestigious commissions beginning in the mid 1980s. The Cathedral (1988-95) Botta designed for the city of Evry, just south of Paris, is the first cathedral built in France in over a century. Its form is that of a truncated cylinder with a skylit ceiling. A halo of trees surrounds the skylight on the roof. The resulting, unusual floorplan is circular. A structure of reinforced concrete is clad inside and out with 800,000 red bricks from Toulouse, laid in a variety of rich textures. Interior fixtures, such as the baptismal font, altar and pews, were all designed by Botta. Botta has stated that “today’s museums are like yesterday’s cathedrals: they are places of ‘communication’ where we can view works of art with the intention of assimilating or interpreting the messages they send us.” The San Francisco Museuem of Modern Art, SFMOMA, (1989-95) in San Francisco, California is Botta’s only project in the United States. Its exterior is clad almost entirely in red brick. One exception is the black and white striped central truncated cylinder, similar to the volume he employed at Evry (and elsewhere), which defines the dramatic, central, multi-story circulation space and brings in natural light via an enormous skylight. Prominent European architects have rarely worked in Latin America but surprisingly Botta has completed one project in South America. The brick clad Cumbra de las Americas Monument was built in 1996 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s second largest city, to commemorate the Summit on Sustainable Growth held there in that year. Twin 22-meter high pavilions, mirroring one another, form a gateway at the entrance to an existing urban park. Stairs within lead up to elevated viewing terraces. Beyond Botta’s impressive architectural portfolio, he has made forays into designing stage sets, exhibitions, furniture, lighting fixtures, housewares and even watches. Perhaps the best known of his non-architectural works are his elegant but uncomfortable metal chairs. From a functional standpoint, his rigid forms seem better suited to the series of lighting fixtures he created for Artemide. John Arbuckle for Brigata Italia