Mario Botta: The Latest Architecture and News

How many stories are hidden behind every line and every wall? Each project serves a purpose, and its creation leaves a lasting impression on the environment it inhabits. ArchDaily's AD Narratives series seeks to uncover the fascinating—and often unexpected—stories that breathe life into selected projects. Through in-depth research, the series delves into the unique details of the design and construction processes, exploring the cultural, social, and political contexts that have shaped each work.

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Santa Cruz de la Sierra is located on the eastern plains of Bolivia, on the banks of the Pirai River. Being the most populous city in the country, it reveals an extreme social and cultural complexity surrounded by extensive pampas and plains. Additionally, it represents one of the most developed cities in Bolivia, with a high municipal indicator of sustainable development. Delving into the importance of community architecture, popular appropriation, the character of urbanity, and other concepts, this article explores the history behind the Summit of the Americas Monument through a series of narratives, documentations, drawings, and images captured by Pino Musi.

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In the center of the city of Lugano, Switzerland, architect Mario Botta has designed a new housing solution on the foundations of the former Cinema Teatro Cittadella. Captured by Paul Clemence, this photo series displays the new residence in a city rich with an artistic and cultural past. The residential complex is located near the ancient basilica of the Sacred Heart of Lugano, nestled in a quiet area away from city traffic.

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Fortyseven is a novel thermal wellness spa designed by the architect Mario Botta, nestled alongside the Limmat River in Baden, Switzerland. Baden, renowned for its rich cultural and wellness offerings, boasts a spa heritage that extends over thousands of years. The Fortyseven Thermal Wellness Spa has revitalized this historical legacy by presenting wellness culture through a modern lens. Designed by Mario Botta, this project offers an immersive encounter for the body, mind, and soul. The essence of the site and its design is captured by the lens of architectural photographer Paul Clemence, in his latest series.

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Swiss architect Mario Botta is known for his geometrically imposing, spatially captivating structures that are invariably dressed in zebra-like horizontal stripes in either black and white or red and white combinations. These both traditional and strikingly modern villas, chapels, wineries, schools, libraries, museums, company headquarters, banks, and residential blocks are scattered throughout towns and mountainous villages in the architect’s native Ticino region in southern Switzerland, extend all over Europe and can be encountered in places as far away as China, India, South Korea, Japan, and the USA.

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Videos

Architects, not Architecture decided to open their archive to help us cope with the current situation of not being able to go out as usual and create a source of inspiration and entertainment through sharing one of the unique talks from their previous 35 events, which have never been published before – including those of architects like Daniel Libeskind, Tatiana Bilbao, Sadie Morgan, Peter Cook, Richard Rogers and Massimiliano Fuksas.

Every week, Archdaily will be sharing one of the Architects, not Architecture. talks which they are currently publishing online in the form of daily full-length video uploads as part of their “new event”: Home Edition 2020 (www.architectsnotarchitecture.com).

Working since he was 16, Swiss architect Mario Botta (April 1, 1943) has become a prolific and well known crafter of space, designing a huge array of places of worship, private homes, and museums, perhaps most notably the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Church of San Giovanni Battista in Mogno, Switzerland. His use of traditional masonry over the streamlined steel and glass of so much modern architecture creates strong, self-confident buildings that pull together the contrast between the weight of his materials and lightness of his designs.

Videos

"Mario Botta: The Space Beyond" is a 78’ architectural documentary on the life journey and works of internationally-acclaimed Swiss architect Mario Botta. The film, which provides a glimpse of the person behind the architect, is co-directed by Loretta Dalpozzo and Michèle Volontè, and produced by Swissbridge Productions.

On the 16th, 17th and 19th of October, the documentary will be screened in New York during the Architecture and Design Film Festival, in the presence of the architect himself and the directors. The film will also be screened during the upcoming Rotterdam Film Festival, Beirut Art Festival, Artecinema film festival (Naples Italy), Milan Deign Film festival, and ADFF in Toronto and Vancouver.

During Milano Arch Week 2019, we had the chance to speak with one of the most influential Swiss architects, Mario Botta. Defining himself as a stonemason, Botta has been working since the age of 16, realizing a vast number of projects of different typologies — from private homes to museums and churches.

Videos

Co-directed by Loretta Dalpozzo and Michèle Volontè, Mario Botta. The Space Beyond is a rare and artistic journey into the work of internationally acclaimed Swiss architect Mario Botta.

The public will soon have the opportunity to experience the vulnerability and awe of briefly inhabiting an animal domain at the “Reverse Zoo,” LABIOMISTA. Translating to “mixture of life,” the 60-acre project is spearheaded by Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen and is set to open in 2019.

There are at least as many definitions of architecture as there are architects or people who comment on the practice of it. While some embrace it as art, others defend architecture’s seminal social responsibility as its most definitive attribute. To begin a sentence with “Architecture is” is a bold step into treacherous territory. And yet, many of us have uttered — or at least thought— “Architecture is…” while we’ve toiled away on an important project, or reflected on why we’ve chosen this professional path.

Most days, architecture is a tough practice; on others, it is wonderfully satisfying. Perhaps, though, most importantly, architecture is accommodating and inherently open to possibility.

This collection of statements illustrates the changing breadth of architecture’s significance; we may define it differently when talking among peers, or adjust our statements for outsiders.

Videos

In one of his 1922 travel essays for the Toronto Star Ernest Hemingway wrote, in a typically thewy tone, of “a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways and all stuck over with large brown hotels built [in] the cuckoo style of architecture.” This was his Switzerland: a country cornered in the heartland of Europe and yet distant from so much of its history. A nation which, for better or worse and particularly over the course of the 20th Century, has cultivated and become subject to a singularly one-dimensional reputation when it comes to architectural culture and the built environment.

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Dream of Venice Architecture, the second in a series by Bella Figura Publications, has brought together a collection of contemporary architects and architectural writers to share their personal experiences of La Serenissima: the great Italian city of Venice. "Water runs through her veins," Editor JoAnn Locktov writes. "Bridges, palaces, churches – every structure is a testament to the resiliency of imagination."

'Defiance' manifests itself in many forms: riots in Baltimore, makeshift housing in Rwanda, Pink Floyd in Venice and plants growing where they ought not sprout. To defy the norm is an act of rebellion and in architecture, doubly so. In the third issue of LOBBY, the burgeoning magazine from London's Bartlett School of Architecture, the notion of defiance and its incarnations are investigated in a collection of essays, interviews and discussions with leading and emerging thinkers in urbanism and architecture. From Swiss master Mario Botta to Carme Pinós, former partner to Enric Miralles, this latest LOBBY investigates the act of defiance as a core tenet of architectural practice.

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The world of architecture is small. So small in fact, that Rem Koolhaas has been credited with the creation of over forty practices worldwide, led by the likes of Zaha Hadid and Bjarke Ingels. Dubbed “Baby Rems” by Metropolis Magazine, this Koolhaas effect is hardly an isolated pattern, with manifestations far beyond the walls of OMA. The phenomenon has dominated the world of architecture, assisted by the prevalence and increasing necessity of internships for burgeoning architects.

In a recent article for Curbed, Patrick Sisson dug into the storied history of internships to uncover some unexpected connections between the world's most prolific architects. With the help of Sisson's list, we've compiled a record of the humble beginnings of the household names of architecture. Where did Frank Gehry get his start? Find out after the break.

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Mario Botta: Architecture and Memory is an exhibition spanning the 50-year career of internationally acclaimed architect Mario Botta, the designer of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art building and one of the century's most fundamental contributors to postmodern architecture.