10 Cite Spring 1987 The Architecture of Mario Botta Narrowed Gates in an Expanded Field

William Sherman

With the intention of regrounding archi- passing seasons. Thus, one may tecture in a more profound or inclusive recapture, via the notion of dwelling, the inquiry, a few individuals and schools of initial values for which the dwelling was thought disavow such limited definitions. built. The dwelling as the repository of They are looking instead within the mankind must offer a micro-climate of discipline of architecture as a source, not life to enhance social communication. as with the postmodern propensity for well as eating, sleeping, love-making, % images or models, but for its underlying and working. The role of these needs has continuities. The essential element which been somewhat distorted and modified by distinguishes this approach from the International Style, and by consumer- historical revivalism is the rcinvigorating oriented architecture, through the of the idea of type as the manifestation of proposal of lavish artificial paradises* archetypes of human interaction, with their common timeless ideal in the Order, the Matrix of all Artifice construction of the city as a place of By the good fortune of having had the public social interaction. The means for opportunity to build, Botta is the reconnection of type and archetype is Mario Botta constructing a record of his exploration geometry, the primary vehicle by which in built, rather than verbal or drawn, man orders his perception. While this form. The pace of his production is Single-lamlly house, Stavlo, Ticino. Switzerland, represents an approach fraught with impressive; in light of the work shown, 1980, Mario Botta. architect potential, it also has its perils, however, it also raises questions about his I Ih hee Gerald D. Hines Interests Archi- negotiating a fine line between geometry ability to keep pace in his exploration of tecture Program, a series of exhibitions as the means to an end and geometry as the potential within his vocabulary of beginning with the work of Leon Krier an end in itself. expression. Taking Possession of the Site and Ricardo Bofill. in its new exhibition As the organization of the exhibition focuses on the work of Mario Botta. In contrast to the previous Hines For one attempting such lofty goals as reflects, it is necessary to consider the Having opened al the Museum of Modern exhibitions, Botta's work is introduced as those described above, Botta builds from houses separately from the urban Art in New York in November 1986, the representing the "rcvitalizalion of a minimal palette: an obsession with projects. The similarities of language and exhibition will arrive at the Farish modern architecture."*' That phrase and geometric order as shapes in plan and expression mask radically different Gallery in Anderson Hall, Rice Universi- the work chosen to illustrate it demand elevation, as extruded form in three intentions. The houses represent defiant ty, on 3 March. With photographs, definition. The buildings clearly grow out dimensions, an abstract interplay of solid monuments set in contrast to the models, and drawings, Botta's buildings of a modernist legacy, reflecting Botta's and void (masonry and glass), and landscape, while the urban projects and projects are well represented and admitted debt to his mentors: Louis introducing a precarious tension to the typically support (while subtly displayed, providing the opportunity to Kahn, Le Corbusier, and Carlo Scarpa. enclosing wall in its erosion as an modifying) the historic pattern. Instead of study them as well as one can short of The ideological foundation of the work of inverted ruin or its disjuncture as a an architecture which at all scales is visiting Switzerland. The accompanying Botta and the Ticincse School (including floating plane. The geometric orders al about the construction of the city, Botta is text and catalogue by Stuart Wrede Tita Carloni, Aurelio Galfetti, Ivano the center of Botta's work are the linear at one scale exploring the isolated object elucidate Botta's ideological stance. Gianola, Flora Ruchat, Luigi Soozzi, and projections of the circle, the square, and in the landscape, while at the larger scale Ivo Trumpy) have often been traced to the the triangle: the cylinder, the cube, and addressing the construction of the city 1 In the mid 1970s a group of young Italian Neo-Rationalist Tendenza , the prism. solely as transformation by extension architects practicing in the Swiss canton retaining the faith in abstraction and when confronted specifically with that of Ticino began to attract attention for rational geometric order, while The architectural paradigms may be context. their work, which sought to overlay a reconnecting to the history of the city as found in the late work of Kahn. in the modernist formal vocabulary with a a source for analogous interpretation. conjunction and serial repetition of The early houses at St. Riva Vitale (1973) distinct regional sensitivity. Powerful simple geometric orders; of Le and Ligornetto (1976) also achieve this objects in the landscape, abstract On one level, we can identify an almost Corbusier, in the abstraction of his dual role, the first in its dynamic representations of timeless archetypes archeological obsession with the forms of modification of pure geometries and. sectional relationship to the site (the formally rooted in the vernacular types of his predecessors, drawing on more specifically, the urban strategy of making of the bridge a primary urban act Ticino and expressing their materiality in characteristic details and plan forms. On freeing the ground plane (literally and of crossing, the tower one of marking) built form, they offered a fresh vision. At another level, at least in the terms in visually); and of Scarpa, in the love of and articulation of multiple volumes the center of the group was Mario Botta, which he discusses his work, the legacy 1 the material and craft of construction. within the coherent whole. Al Ligornetto, whose small "disturbing" houses and of his masters is present ideologically in the bipartite conception bridged within challenging civic buildings were begin- the continuity of an architecture An architecture of such minimal affords a simultaneous unily and ning to appear in the valleys and on the grounded in human experience. In this articulation demands one of two discontinuity, as well as its legibility as a mountainsides in the suburbs of Como respect, he continues the modern critical strategies: the discovery of the geometry fragment of an urban wall. and Lugano. After a decade of program against the superficial through the exhaustive investigation of tremendous production by the still-young manifestations of the dominant culture by the clear expression of the represented By contrast, the Casa Rotunda and the architect, a body of work rather than a seeking to stretch the limits of its human institutions (the genius of Kahn) House at Pregassona (1979) represent few isolated projects can be discussed, conventions. It is in this marginal area, or the limiting of informative input architectures of the form of the enclosing tracing the development and discovering where conventions are redefined by ("restricting traffic al the gates of wall, configurational rather than spatial, the limits of a narrowly focused formal invention, that one must confront one's perception"6). The development of untensioned by structure, sectional investigation. In addition to the houses, deepest values. Botta's work in time suggests, with a few development, or the exceptional event, larger commissions in nearby urban exceptions, a progression from the former yet retain an empathetic power in their centers provide a new subject for critical / seem to have more and more a sense of position (house at Riva St. Vitale, the simplicity, particularly in light of the evaluation, placing the generative ideas of the existence of certain hidden but School at Morbio Inferiore. the Zurich more baroque sensibility to follow. the early work in a new light. profound demands - which I recognize as Railway Competition), with obvious roots part of the heritage of the modern in both the ideology of the Tendenza and The search for the variation in later The Modern Legacy movement's masters - detnands which the teachings of Louis Kahn. toward the houses leads into an attempt to modify In the absence of the perception of a reassert man as the focus of interest of latter (the Casa Rotunda and subsequent the pure geometry through the coherent ethos at this stage in our cultural our profession. These profound houses, the Housing at Turin, the Gallery introduction of other recognizable development, contemporary artists, exigencies, the need for memory, the at Tokyo) in which a facile play of shapes, as in the houses at Breganzona architects, and writers find it necessary need for archaic suggestions, the need for geometries and paradigmatic forms (1984) and Morbio Superiore (1983). The to define themselves by their relationship mythic forms, the need for the appears to lake precedence. Botta geometries which brought meaningful to "modernism." These stances range confrontation between man and cosmic discusses his work convincingly in order to the first conceptions have been from reaction, as in '"postmodernism," wlues, the need for the great ideas of the Kahnian terms, though the few sketches reduced to shapes, the powerful formal typically by setting up a functionalist or past, are all, in fact, the real motivators offered as well as the increasingly moves, such as the central rupture, aesthetic straw man as the representative which have sustained the need for singular quality of the buildings reduced to signs of their origins, of all aspects of modernism, to an expression and testimony in every epoch.* themselves (in more ways than the diminished yet elaborated to a state of aspiration to continuity, building on stronger symmetries noted in Wrede's willful play. From geometry as the order accompanying text) imply a more narrow threads of inquiry not yet exhausted. I would like to make an architecture "which transforms nature into culture,"' focus. Such a progression affirms the While a reaction to an oversimplification which responds to real needs. Today, I we have proceeded to an autonomous precariousness of the line between tends to generate an impoverished see real needs as a series of elements geometry, signifying only its own response, the narrow focus on single geometry as a means to an end and existence and to which all institutions of which place man in relation with the geometry as an end in itself. threads suffers in its privacy as exclusive earth itself, with the trajectory of the sun dwelling submit. That this is a conscious insight. in the sky, with the awareness of the act (seeking the "zero degree" of Right: Artisan Cantar, Balarna, Switzerland, 1977-1979, Mario Bona, archltact. Far right: Home, Breganiona, Switzerland, 1984, Mario Botta, archltoct

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By contrast, in the housing at Pregassona the tendency toward the singularity of (1985), one of the few urban projects meaning of the elements of his palette, generated out of typological concerns, the rather than a demand for structural urban, street-defining row-house type is expressionism, a direction which is subtly transformed through the precisely the opposite of what one would interlocking of a bridge-like element into expect of repeated investigations in a an architecture parlame of the narrowly focused field: the charge of interdependence of civic life. Here the multiple meanings by the disciplined geometry is dependent rather than causal exploitation of the manifold expressive School, Morblo Inferiors. Switzerland. 1072-11177, Mario Botta, archltact through the introduction of the qualities of the medium. interpenetration of two recognizable types - the bridge and the row house conjoin to form a new, yet familiar order. Many of the qualities for which Botta's The obsession wilh the inverted ruin or work has been praised are well- the viaduct which appears in many represented in this exhibition: the desire projects (with sources in Kahn's Venice to "build the site," the relationship to project of 1969 and Rossi's Gallaratesc'1) vernacular Ticinese traditions, the tension emerges as the vehicle for the between contextural relationship, and the transformation of the conventional street identity of the new construction Row Homing, Pragaaaona, Swltiarland, 1985, Mario Botta, archltact model for the Urban Housing at Turin (particularly in historically rich urban meaning in spite of his public This approach, in contrast to his early (1985). Its genealogy lies in ihe marriage settings), and the succinct clarity of the statements?) may be evidenced by the work, represents a movement away from of the megaslructurc to the street and objects. Increasingly, as the body of work recent tendency to include images of the the ideology of the Tendenza: substituting superblock. A similar operation to that at expands, however, one is struck by the architect in the drawings, completing the geometry for analogy and form for type. Pregassona, the balance has been shifted seemingly arbitrary appropriation of self-referential cycle. The geometries represent values unto away from the type which has the geometric and formal devices, applied themselves in defining "type" in terms of possibility to order the streets. As an without evidence of a consistent or The Modification or the City shape: round house, triangular house, urban enclave, it unfortunately inherits an coherent meaning. The compelling Two early projects, the school at Morbio square house wilh circle. As opposed to a inhuman scale that renders repetition investigations of his best work are Inferiore (1972-1977) and the Artisan typological expression of the underlying monotonous, streets without definition diminished by the formulaic reapplication Center at Balerna (1977-1979), may be orders of our cultural life, Botta's recent through the freeing of the ground plane, of the results in subsequent projects. In identified as successful explorations of work is approaching a disciplined and housing types of indeterminate becoming increasingly reliant on a the use of ordering geometries as a archeology of the forms of recent lineage. The location of the circular civic geometric and formal determinism, the means of revealing archetypes of the cultures. In moving away from the idea of space at the exact center reinforces one's critical argument of the work - central to construction of the city: both sit in type - by which the architecture may suspicions of the reappearance of an its position in the "revitalization of sympathetic opposition to the connect to the culture and its history, arbitrary geometric determinism (plan modern architecture" - is lost as the surrounding landscape while prefiguring according to the precepts of the Tendenza into shape), an attitude toward the generating idea detaches itself from its an urban condition in the construction of - and into the abstract manipulation of construction of the city truly conceived highest function, the act of the a civic space in suburbia. The serial pure forms within traditional urban through narrow "gates of perception," construction of the city, This speaks of repetition of the constituent elements of conventions, Botta is indeed continuing a the need to return to the generative principles; to push the limits of the the institution works in concert wilh the legacy of modern architecture, but at the Surfaces in Light vocabulary without resorting to arbitrary unique event - the monument - to create expense of the critical power of the Much of the power of Botta's work lies in elaboration, ordering perception in the a legible urban analogy. sources of his early work. his ability to use common available service of higher ideals rather than materia] such as concrete block, which is conceiving of order as an end in itself. • While using similar formal devices, the This evolution is evident in the appropriate to the modest budgets of recent urban projects are rescued on one commercial projects: the State Bank at many of the clients, in a way that both level from the conceptual arbitrariness of Fribourg (1983), the office buildings in exploits the modular properties of the the recent houses by a respect for the Lugano (1985, 1986), and the Gallery in block as it may be revealed in light, and Notes discipline of urban conventions, but they Tokyo (1985). All are extremely well- its density as an enclosing wall. However, fail as critical works by their behaved in respecting the continuity of in articulating the order of both his 1 Mario Botta in interview with Livio Dimitriu, unquestioning acceptance of the the urban fabric while retaining a houses and urban works, Botta's use of Penpecta 20, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1983. p. w 122. conventions. In the work in historic urban geometric purity. Skillful use is made of materials and disregard of structure 2 Stuart Wrcde, wall text of Ihc exhibition. centers, Botta explores the possibilities in the geometry to articulaie the planarity of reinforces the emergent self-referential 3 Kenneth Frampton, "Mario Botta and Ihe School the tension between the abstract the facade (Tokyo, Library at quality. Unlike Kahn, who consulted of Ticino". Oppositions 14. Fall 1978, p. 2. geometric order and the traditions of Villeurbaine), the monumental bricks before using them, Botta is 4 Mario Botta in interview with Stuart Wrede in conventional city making, his "newness imperative of the corner, or the repetitive interested in the textural, sensuous exhibition catalogue. Mario Botta. New York. Museum of Modern Art, 1986, p. 67. of the old and the archaeology of ihc nature of the urban wall. A closer look at qualities of the surface rather than the 8 5 Ptrspecta 20, p. 124. new." The "new" in this case goes little the plans, however, reveals the extent to representational value in the structural 6 George Kubler. The Shape of Time, New Haven, further than the abstraction of the which geometry controls, instead of properties of masonry, and will support Yale University Press, 1962. p. 124. language and the maintenance of whole reveals, relegating the perceptual and them as necessary (without comment) to 7 Ibid., p. 67. geometric Figures within the limits of occupational experience to one of achieve the desired abstract play of solid 8 Ibid., p. 69. 9 Frampton, p. 9. complex urban contexts. dependency rather than causality. and void. This is merely a recognition of 10 Exhibition catalogue, p. 68