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.