by: Daniel Fox
Event: Mario Botta — Recent Projects
Location: Steelcase, 04.28.08
Speaker: Mario Botta — Principal, Mario Botta Architetto
Organizer: School of Architecture and Design at New York Institute of Technology
Sponsors: Consulate General of Switzerland; AIANY
The Wellness Centre — Berg Oase by Mario Botta incorporates leaf-life skylights that blend with the landscape.
Urs Homberger
Swiss-born architect Mario Botta is best known for his rigorous use of symmetrical massing, pure geometric forms, and the mystery he evokes by using masonry as his primary medium.
For Botta, architecture is an expression of its locale, through ideas, aesthetics, history, and tectonics. In the Nuova Sede della Banca Nazionale (the new site for the national bank) in Athens, Greece (1998-2001), local limestone is the main construction material. A nearby archeological site influenced the decision to create a grand entry with direct views and public access to the excavation, referencing the city’s history yet re-framing it in contemporary space.
“Architecture is not born through program, but through a specific situation of space,” according to Botta. In the Biblioteca Municipale in Dortmund, Germany (1995-2000), he conceived the building as two contrasting joint volumes made from different materials and geometric forms. A transparent and open semi-circular glass structure faces the main street and a new part of town, while an opaque, rectangular stone form faces the old neighborhoods. Botta sited the latter to act as a fort protecting the old town from new development.
Botta believes in the healing power of architecture and landscape. For the Wellness Centre — Berg Oase (2003-2006), commissioned by the Grand Hotel Tschuggen, in Arosa, Switzerland, all of the program is buried underground in response to the “extraordinary geographic configuration of natural bowls surrounded by mountains.” The only visible element is a series of vertical, “leaf-like” skylights that breach the tree line acting as light wells and providing views of the surrounding terrain.
“The technical aspect of architecture is just the beginning. The choice of form and material in relation to a specific situation is imperative to transmit strong emotions and give the architecture a meaning beyond programmatic requirements,” Botta said. Architecture “builds a roof for humanity.”
Lucas Correa-Sevilla is an architectural designer and Brooklyn-based freelance writer.