INTERVIEW WITH MARIO BOTTA

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BY LILY PRIGIONIERO

irst recognized for a series of remarkable private throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In 1996, under homes in his native Ticino, Switzerland, Mario the auspices of the Swiss Italian University, he founded the FBotta (b.1943) is known internationally for his reli- Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland, a gious, museum, and commercial structures whose monu- school offering a five-year, accredited program in architec- Throughout the mental forms are humanized by a masterful use of light ture based on humanistic criteria. He has been honored and luxuriant stonework. internationally with numerous honorary doctorates, fellow- interview, Mario He is a church builder of first rank. His churches, ships, and museum exhibitions. Botta draws to shockingly unconventional in their archetypal simplicity, forgo the appearance and symbolism of traditional houses organize his thoughts of worship. Instead, he seeks to create a timeless, primary JUDITH DUPRé: In your native Ticino, the mountain and illustrate the experience of the sacred by returning to the fundamental meets the lake and north meets south. How have this motives of architecture—light, location, material, and region’s unique geography and culture influenced your points he wants to form—executed within the context of a highly individual work? make. It is a remark- response and an equally specific landscape. Botta’s churches define and elevate what is universal and, in so doing, MARIO BOTTA: Here we have the privilege of living able, fluid, and become meaningful expressions of faith. His insistence that between two cultures: the northern world, an internal prolific production. good building is an unalienable human right has provided culture, and the south, an external culture. In the north, RIGHT Conceptual sketch, Chapel the aesthetic and moral foundation of his work, which is in the Alps, the idea of a house is that of a structure that of St. John the Baptist, Mogno There is no apparent constructed with scrupulous attention to detail, and also an in a most profound sense gives protection—it is made (1992‒96). resistance between insight into the architect’s personal sense of responsibility, of wood, it is warm. It is the culture of the interior. In an integrity that he would not describe as spirituality but Italy, the Mediterranean, the house evolves from the PAGES 10-11 The Chapel of what he sees in his that reveals itself as such nonetheless. concept of the outdoor, external piazza. Here, we know Santa Maria degli Angeli, Monte mind and what His earliest ecclesiastical commission, completed the tectonic of the northern world, but also the great Tamaro (1990–96), located in a appears on the paper when he was twenty years old, was a parish house next to light of the Mediterranean. ski resort in the Swiss Alps, 5141 the church in his family’s village of Genestrerio. In 1979 he feet (1567 meters) above sea level, before him. completed a subterranean library at the seventeenth-century JD: How can you see Ticino, a place where you have is accessible only by cable car. The Capuchin Monastery in Lugano, and made subsequent lived and worked for nearly your entire life, with new chapel was commissioned by modifications to its chapel. The past decade has seen the eyes? Egidio Cattaneo, the resort’s completion of four of Botta’s churches; the first cathedral owner, as a memorial to his late built in France in over a century; a synagogue; a scale re- MB: You can never know a place that well. Every time wife Mariangela. Made of rein- creation of Borromini’s seventeenth-century church, San I go to an old place, I discover new things. It’s an infi- forced concrete faced with rusticat- Carlo alle Quattro Fontane; and the design of numerous nite reading. You can never really say you know a place ed porphyry, it is a hybrid design other ecclesiastical projects. until you have completed a project, because at that point that combines the shapes of a Along with his architectural practice, Botta teaches the project transforms the site. Architecture brings with viaduct, church, amphitheater, it the idea of transformation. It transforms the existing and tower. Botta extended a path equilibrium into another equilibrium. This is the magi- leading from the mountain via a cal aspect of architecture. Architecture always trans- processional walkway 213_ feet forms its site; it never leaves it neutral. This is true not (65 meters) long that is on axis only of my work, but of all architecture, whether pro- with the rising sun, and that found or banal. appears to emerge from the moun- What I love about architecture is not the con- tain and terminates in a belvedere structed volume, but its rapport with the empty space that overlooks, and constructs a that surrounds it. There is a continual give and take new relationship with, the magnif- between architecture and its context. When I make a icent panorama below. The chapel small house, it’s not the object that interests me, but the itself is located below the crucifix, ABOVE AND RIGHT Botta’s struc- spatial relationship that this object has with the land- under the walkway, and can be tures evolve from the modernist scape. If there were a thermometer capable of measur- approached from descending stair- tradition and reflect his appren- ing the quality of architecture, it would be able to cases on either side. ticeships under Carlo Scarpa, Le measure the transformation that has occurred in the Corbusier, and, most profoundly, landscape. When I see Ronchamp on the hillside, I see Louis Kahn. Though retaining that Ronchamp has transformed the landscape. That modernism’s rational, geometric building has constructed the landscape. forms, his buildings find their deeper roots in ancient archetypes, JD: Yes, and the landscape has defined that building. ruins of the past, and the striated stonework of the Tuscan MB: That’s true. Romanesque, such as that of the Ring is inviolability. Neither beginning nor end exist in it, it begins and ends everywhere. . . . remote twelfth-century Chapel of JD: What is the process of taking possession of a place The ring becomes the form of cohesion, of girdling, of embrace. It becomes the expression of San Galgano near Chiusdino, and unearthing the memories that are connected with it? abundance and safety. Since, of all the figures, the ring unites the smallest perimeter with the Italy, interior and exterior views of which are depicted here. MB: The first act in making architecture is not to put a largest content, it is the richest and the most indwelling of them all. stone on top of a stone, but to put a stone on the earth. —Rudolf Schwarz, THE CHURCH INCARNATE, 1938

8 9 LEFT The chapel on Monte hands appear in a Marian litany, Tamaro is dimly lit like a grotto. a series of painted prayers of The theme of hands informs the praise to Mary, that are rooted in interior painting program. These a medieval, agricultural, intuitive primitivistic images were execut- understanding of the world. The ed in inlaid mortar by Enzo paintings—some of them are Silence is to Light Cucchi with the liturgical guid- shown in larger detail on this Light is to Silence ance of Padre Giovanni Pozzi. page—are located over twenty- Monumental hands in a gesture two embrasured windows set at The threshold of their crossing of prayer adorn the apse behind floor level that give visitors a view the altar. Smaller images of down the side of the mountain. is the Singularity is Inspiration (Where the desire to express meets the possible) is the Sanctuary of Art is the treasury of the Shadows (Material cast shadows shadows belong to light) —Louis Kahn, THE NOTEBOOKS AND DRAWINGS OF LOUIS I. KAHN, 1973

The Cedar is Mary, The Olive, tree of The Shadow is The Sea is Mary, The Book is Mary, The Pomegranate is The Rose is Mary, The Moon is Mary, because just as the peace, is Mary, Mary, in which the beyond measure by in which is written Mary, because, like delicate and flower- because she reflects cedar puts down whose twig carried afflicted and infirm reason of all the the Word in golden the fruit which con- ing in the sun of the light from the roots deep enough to by the dove to the find relief from the rivers of grace letters which every- tains a multitude of justice, made fruit- sun that is God and enable it to grow ark marked the fierce heart of which run into her, body must guard in sweet seeds, so she ful by heavenly dew, shines it on the higher than any reconciliation of adversity. inexhaustible for her the recesses of his encloses the sweet- whose purple hue is divine maternity, other tree, so she man and God. distribution of the heart. ness of all the the blush of mod- attracting the waves was so deeply con- rains of plenty, graces. esty, the ardor of of our afflictions. firmed in humility unfathomable in her charity, the zeal of as to allow her to liberality and justice. soar above all others transparency. when she conceived her divine Son. 10 11 It’s a way of possessing the earth. It’s a fundamental answer, must respond in the context of his own time. feet] high, came down slowly, five At Mogno, I rediscovered a sense of gravity, a sense act, a sacred act. It separates the microcosm of con- But the answer of any given time has a great historical kilometers an hour, and destroyed ten of light, a sense of the sun’s movement over twenty-four- struction from the macrocosm of the world. memory. I maintain that for every creative person, not houses and the old church. Zero. Four hours. Every day I made a different drawing of the path Architecture automatically brings to itself the only architects, but all artists, their research is the great hundred years of history annulled. of the sun, using the drawings like a magical instru- sacred. The act of making architecture transforms a past. Picasso is the primitive man, Paul Klee is the child When I arrived at the place, I was ment—a geometric instrument like a sundial. condition of nature into one of culture. This transfor- in every one of us, Henry Moore is modern but archa- very surprised. This wasn’t an event mation evokes the spirit of man. It is man’s conscious ic. Paradoxically, with every creation, it is not the that happened in the distant Third JD: Would you say the transformation of the Mogno plan thought that differentiates him from the animal. future the artist is thinking of, but the past. It is the World. It was just a few miles from from a square into an ellipse into a circle is a metaphor Architecture always roots itself to a spe- same with architecture. Louis Kahn said, “The past is where I lived. Nature has the power for humanity’s potential spiritual transformation? cific place. Every building is different like a friend.” to annul cultural conditions. from another. If I move a house by only I like the dimension of man. I want to see how My first reaction was, “I don’t know why you MB: Yes, it’s been interpreted that way. Art historian a few meters, I have another spatial con- man moves in the landscape. I try to understand two ABOVE The Chapel of St. John want to build the church again.” It’s a small village, Rudolf Arnheim has written very nice things about that sideration, another rapport with light, things: first, how the sun moves in a twenty-four-hour the Baptist, Mogno (1992–96, with no year-round inhabitants, there are only summer church. Every once in a while he would write me letters another sun, another orientation. My period and second, how the seasons change. I observe 1998) is an intimate space con- residents, so there wasn’t a functional or liturgical asking, “Is it true that the axis of the circle falls on the architecture is born from the earth itself. how the landscape expands and contracts. I see how a Mario Botta’s gener- structed of alternating courses of motive. Another motive existed. The people of the vil- crucifix?” I would go to my drawings and make calcula- I like to think that it hasn’t been placed place lives in the arc of a day, and imagine the various ous vision—evident in locally quarried gray Riveo gran- lage said, “We want to construct a new church because tions and see that it was true, but it wasn’t something I On April 25, 1986, the alpine vil- on the earth, but rises up from the earth seasons. I find that in Ticino where I live, the mountains ite and white Peccia marble that there used to be a church here.” It was a way of not let- had done purposely. There were many coincidences like lage of Mogno was engulfed by as a natural condition of a specific place. define a completely different space in the winter than his compelling need to recall the lyrical masonry fronts of ting the mountain conquer them. This project helped this. Or he would say, “Have you thought that the twelve an avalanche. The snowslide It brings with it not only the geography, they do in the summer. The highway, lake, and plants teach, the profusion of Tuscan Romanesque churches. me understand a lot of things: there is an ancient battle concentric arches of the apse represent the twelve apos- demolished the community’s focal but also the memory, the culture, the his- all change. There are things I see in the winter that I Two granite buttresses pierce the between man and nature; man constructs, nature tles?” I did the arches to demonstrate the great depth of point, a seventeenth-century ABOVE In 1999 Botta created a tory of that very place. The architect possesses a piece don’t see in the summer. To answer your question, I like his ideas, his expan- building envelope and arch over destroys. the walls and didn’t consider whether there were eleven or church dedicated to St. John the life-size cross section of Francesco of the land, but this geography has a preexisting history to verify the dimensions of man and imagine the rela- sive use of rich mate- the interior and appear to embrace I said to myself, “I want to make something that twelve arches. Although many symbolic and metaphoric Baptist. The metal spine running Borromini’s Church of San Carlo and a memory. For this reason, architecture needs to tion of this space to the new object I am going to intro- rials and light in his the structure protectively, as if will resist, that will last.” In order to resist the moun- values come through the reading of the building, that was down the center of the roof of the alle Quattro Fontane, Rome incorporate memory because it stems from the mother duce. Although the landscape is immense, the insertion defying the mountain to encroach tain, I couldn’t make a glass church, a cardboard church. not my original motivation. Before Mogno was an ecclesi- new chapel is exactly aligned to (1638–41) on the shores of Lake earth that generates it. A building is not a mobile home of even a small object changes the scenery. Therefore, I buildings—is apparent upon the church. Both ceiling and I had to make something that could last a thousand astical invention, it was an architectural invention. the nave of the former church. Lugano to celebrate the 400th or a sculpture that you can move around. Every build- try to understand the elements of nature—the sun and once more: he has rent- window, the circular roof admits years. I took the quarried stones and brought them to Botta has said the design arose anniversary of Borromini’s birth, ings refers to a unique landscape. This is the most the seasons—and I like to imagine the history of that ever-changing patterns of light. Mogno. I put in a glass ceiling because the roof is the JD: For me the apse recalls the deep vistas formed by the from his “determination to resist also born in the Ticino region. extraordinary fact of architecture. So to answer your place, whether there are traces of man or not. ed a helicopter for the Coupled with the plan’s evolution “soft” part of the church. Nearly all the roofs of the horseshoe arches at the Great Mosque of Cordoba in the mountain, and the need to bear Standing nearly 108_ feet question, the critical reading of the territory is the very The political history is insignificant compared to afternoon so that we from square to ellipse to circle, the churches in your book have been transformed because Spain, which imply the passage of time. witness to something greater than (33 meters) high and made up of first act of architecture. the history of the landscape. When I do a project, I can visit two of his light intimates the possibility of they have come down, or have burned. The glass roof one's own life, and overcome the 35,000 pieces of wood supported would like it to be eternal, even though I know it will transformation. is a sign of contemporary technology. It’s a roof that in MB: That is a beautiful interpretation. However, when I sense of loneliness that permeates by a steel frame, the church was JD: You have often spoken of the mutual dependence only last for maybe fifty years. This is another impor- stone chapels high in fifty years can be changed. did this, my concern was more with how to cut the stone. modern society.” constructed with the diverse efforts of structure and site, and said that “the quality of the tant aspect of architecture: architecture began before the Alps that are not of architects, craftsmen, and stu- architectural endeavor hinges on the intensity of this civilization and will continue after my death. accessible by road dur- dents, as well as the local popu- exchange.” It seems to me that your monumental Architecture has the power to survive. Its potential for lace, many of them unemployed. buildings are not in dialogue with the landscape, but memory exists in its ability to endure. History and ing the early spring. It is Lugano’s newest landmark, dominate it. memory are fundamental to architecture, not its func- Approaching Botta’s appearing to emerge from the tion. That can change. mountains themselves during the MB: To me, this is not a negative criticism but a posi- It is the light entering the Pantheon that is impor- work from the air— day, and providing the city with a tive fact. The nature of the landscape is that even a tant. Over its history, it has been a temple, a market, and feeling the earth fall dramatically lit beacon at night. small bell tower can dominate it. It’s a sign of man in a church, yet, what remains important is not its function, away in a sea of deep the landscape. There’s no need to be afraid of the pres- but the light entering through its oculus. The Pantheon ence of man’s mark. When there are two points in a is a work of genius and intuition. It is so simple. When alluvial crevasses, see- valley, and I find the bridge between them, this bridge is you enter the Pantheon, you understand its space in its ing the desolate rock what constructs the landscape. Without the bridge, entirety at once. With its single light source and simple there is no landscape. From this point of view, architec- geometric shape, I can draw it from memory. houses below defiantly ture is the act of affirming the artificial, the man-made. clinging to their small It’s part of human expression and constructs the human JD: Tell me about the act of drawing. part of the mountain, landscape. When I built Monte Tamaro, it was an act of artifice: the mountain never had a chapel. The chapel is MB: Even for me it is mysterious. When trying to passing over a solitary, a stone nail in the mountain. It was born of the need of understand a new situation, I am aware of the very dif- hopeful cross at the top man to possess that mountain. From the beginning, ferent responses I have from one project to the next. of one peak—reveals architecture has always encompassed the tension There are some happy projects that are intuited quickly, between man and nature. and there are other projects that have a difficult path. I the highly specific can’t generalize really. It often happens that I have an landscape that has JD: Your new projects are located all over the world— idea to insert a house in a mountain and after drawing Syria, Israel, India, Korea, Germany, Holland, Japan, multiple variations of the original idea, the final form of inspired his work and and Italy. What is the process of understanding a for- the house comes full circle and is very close to the origi- confirms his insistence eign landscape? nal thought with just slight modifications. that he is merely I use drawing not as a representation, but as an MB: I am not able to draw a line if I haven’t seen the sit- instrument of research. The drawing helps me under- unearthing that which uation. I have never made an abstract project. I need to stand the problem. This is why I don’t work on a com- has always been. feed myself with a specific landscape. I try to interrogate puter. The computer is mute. When I make a sketch, it the landscape: solutions are already present in the virgin has hope. When I see a computer drawing, it seems like landscape. It is as if it is there waiting for a solution. a caricature. It has no hope. It’s dead. It’s only a repre- For example, the architect goes to the hill of sentation. The sketch is not a representation, but an Ronchamp. There is an individual question as well as a instrument to understand the problem. Therefore, I collective question. The architect’s client is part of this often think with the pencil. equation, saying, “I need a pilgrimage church on this hill.” Le Corbusier interrogates and investigates the JD: You have said, “In designing churches I have dis- landscape, which gives his chapel its essential gesture. covered the primary reasons to make architecture.” This sign of man was a need that already existed in the landscape. MB: I began to construct churches when there was an avalanche that destroyed the old church of Mogno. JD: What will be, has always been. When I went to the site, all I saw was the staked-out area where the church and cemetery had been. It made a MB: Exactly, the land already has the answers. At any deep impression on me. To think that while I was given moment in history, an architect must give the watching television, a mass of snow, 30 meters [98.4

12 13 In the end, it was a miracle even I don’t trust those who start out saying, “I think I’ll do building types that are recognizable for what they are— Photography is necessarily limited, just as a woman is for me. the Trinity.” Generally, I prefer to make a triangle and a school, a power plant, a library. From the exterior, different in a photograph than she is in real life. A pho- then have others interpret it as the Trinity. your churches do not “read” as churches. What is the tograph is only an approximation. JD: In replacing what was In the case of Evry, they called me and said, “We obligation of the architect to provide visual landmarks? Before I saw the Salk Institute in San Diego last destroyed at Mogno, you are, want you to build a cathedral.” A cathedral! That’s year, I had only seen it in photographs. In these photo- through the act of creating the something that was done in the Middle Ages or the MB: I think that in the chaos of today’s city, good graphs, I could not see the rapport between the moun- building, putting yourself in a Renaissance. Today it’s still possible to make a cathe- architecture has to become a point of reference. Martin tains and the sea, but that is the essential theme of that continuum of history. Its demise dral. There’s something magical about the word cathe- Heidegger, the German philosopher, said, “Man lives building: the passage between the mountains and the is implied—at some point that dral. I remember what Le Corbusier wrote in When when he has the possibility of orienting himself in the ocean. Even discussions of architecture are like that. building will be gone. Cathedrals Were White. In that book, he was referring interior of a space.” Therefore, to live is to be capable What we are saying today is a dialogue held in order to to a time when cathedrals were new, when men still of orienting oneself. All the great architecture of the understand what an architect thinks. But it is not archi- MB: But that’s part of the histo- believed, when mankind still had hope. Le Corbusier past has provided this orientation. I go into a castle and tecture. I love architecture. I also love all the things ABOVE The imposing, square ry of man, which is very small compared to the history was the first to understand the modernity of the cathe- pretty much am capable of knowing where I am. I go about architecture that I cannot express about it. facade of the Church of St. Peter of the universe. It impresses me to see an ancient fossil. dral. He brought back that which was considered histor- into Chartres, and even if the space is not entirely ABOVE The design of the the Apostle (1987–95) in I bought a spiral-shaped fossil that is millions of years ical as a possibility for contemporary expression. ABOVE A preliminary sketch of JD: Some have interpreted your stark, minimal struc- Cymbalista Synagogue and Sartirana, Italy, is animated with old, which I keep as a sculpture. In a million years the At Evry I had a problem. I was frightened by the the Church at Malpensa Airport, ABOVE St. Cecilia, carved from tures as a resistance to beauty. Please discuss the role of Jewish Heritage Center decorative, multipatterned brick pyramids will probably not be here anymore. That word cathedral. So I thought of the two great Christian Milan (1998, construction to begin marble in 1600 by the Ticinese ornament in a church, and the lack of ornament in your (1996–98), located on the campus cladding that showcases Botta’s which is man-made is ephemeral. This is our condition, traditions: the centric plan of the Eastern Byzantine 2000), illustrates its tripartite artist Stefano Maderno, succinctly own. of Tel Aviv University in Israel, incomparable use of stone. The to have brief moments. If we think of the Romanesque church, and the Western Latin-cross plan. I attempted a design, which was inspired by the expresses the fundamental charac- synthesizes the building’s two square plan encloses a circular cathedrals, a thousand years old, it’s a very small synthesis of these two cultures, to reunite the Eastern petals of a clover. One hundred teristics of Mario Botta’s work. MB: Architecture brings with it the idea of gravity in functions: a house of worship and central space—the intersection of amount of time. My grandfather lived a century. Just and Western traditions, in the spatial plan at Evry, which two feet (31 meters) high, the First and foremost, the idea of the the sense that architecture is space organized within and a cultural meeting place. An inte- these two primary geometries think, the medieval age was only ten grandfathers ago. has a central plan with a longitudinal orientation. For the project consists of four levels that gestating, female animus— by the forces that bring it to the ground. When I make a rior view of the synagogue shows being a central theme of Botta’s Everything is relative, obviously, but I like to think that rest of the cathedral, I tried to express the values of an house the chapel, offices, and mul- Mother Earth—that births the building, I like to feel that it is bound to the ground. An Botta’s refined use of stone and work. The church appears to be architecture lasts more than the life of man. This is the artisan. The bricks are from Toulouse, brick-laying tipurpose rooms. The exterior and deep, internal, domestic space, airplane flies; it has another beauty. But for me, archi- wood, and the overhead illumina- windowless, but in fact the nave is measure of a man’s life and his mark. being a great French tradition, and are precisely laid. portions of the interior will be clad provides the impetus of his works, tecture has its roots in the earth. The idea of ornamen- tion that is a hallmark of his flooded with natural light filtered The statue of the Virgin at Mogno is a thousand in red stone from nearby Verona. whether private or public. His tation is secondary to this. I like to think that people can religious buildings. through perimeter skylights. years old. We found it in an antique store. I’d like to JD: The metaphor of darkness is so critical to under- buildings are invariably clad in apparent, I have the capability of grasping the whole. feel the nature of my spaces, that they are not distracted think that this Madonna—made for a church but then standing the medieval cathedral. The shadows of the stone that is precisely cut and This is what makes architecture livable. I would like by decoration. “Ornament is a crime,” said Adolf Loos. stolen perhaps, held in private hands, shown in a muse- upper reaches, transepts, and apsidal chapels, for exam- placed to emphasize their surfaces this communal house that we call the city to have these um, and finally sold—in the end found its way home ple, become a metaphor for incomprehensibility. Your as well as their volumes. This points of reference to permit people to orient them- JD: Says Mario Botta! back to a church. church spaces, in contrast, are clearly articulated, well show of stone, like the elegant selves. This is the opposite of what contemporary lit, and easily understood. gesture of Cecilia’s fingers, points architecture represents as it reduces structures to MB: The wall itself becomes an ornament. Mogno is JD: When speaking of Mogno, you have described the back to its creator’s virtuoso per- labyrinths—cities in which people have to follow made from drawn stone. It is not spartan or austere. need to transform the “most intense emotions in life MB: At Evry, I worked formance as a master of materi- arrows and signs because architecture has lost its capac- Beauty is not a secondary thing; it is a primary thing. into spaces.” This church took ten years to construct. against the tradition of A church is the place, als. Botta’s buildings are imbued ity to provide orientation. This is a value that we have When I see the texture of the walls at Mogno, I know it What was the genesis of the project and the communi- the French cathedral by with a sensuous hermeticism: like to recover. is not secondary, it is not decoration. It is structural. I ABOVE The Parish Church of the ty’s reaction to it? using a very strong par excellence, of architecture. the sculpture, they seductively In downtown San Francisco I made a small build- love this essential aspect of architecture because it is not Blessed Odorico (1987–92) in overhead light, which turn away from the viewer, pre- ing that becomes a point of reference, like a magical superfluous, it is necessary. It is like the beauty of a Pordenone, Italy magnifies the MB: In addition to architecture’s aesthetic aspect, there negates the tradition of medieval stained glass. I had senting a barrier—Botta’s sacro- eye, that describes what its function is. That was my woman without makeup. circle-in-a-square formula devel- is always an epic tension. People can feel architecture’s problems with the committee because they wanted sanct wall—that paradoxically intent as well at Evry: not to construct just another When painter Enzo Cucchi came to Monte oped by Botta at St. Peter’s. The power. At this small church in Mogno there were a lot stained-glass windows. They said that in people’s minds conceals and reveals the internal building, but to make a structure that also was a sign. Tamaro he did not want to hear the word decoration. plan consists of a rectangular, of controversies. I understood only later that the con- a cathedral was the stained-glass windows. I responded space. Because the face is hidden, “I’m not coming to decorate the church, I am coming to colonnaded courtyard that frames troversies were proportionate to the power of the proj- that the nature of stained-glass windows was to have it is a universal and timeless JD: The interiors of your buildings differ greatly from make my mark on the church.” His marks are immedi- a central conical bell tower, the ect; small endeavors do not cause controversy. Mogno is darkness, not light. Chartres is powerful because you portrait: existing in the present by their exteriors. There is a dissonance there. The exteri- ate, like graffiti, which I like very much. It is not deco- terminus of which is cut on a about the push and pull between the mountains and enter into darkness and then the light is revealed through virtue of its animated, objectified ors are stoic. It is in the interior where you touch the rative painting. diagonal and completed with a man, and so it brought up some very fundamental its windows. At Evry, windows didn’t make sense beauty; necessarily implying the human being. slanting circular skylight, iron issues. In a supermarket, even the most extraordinary because there is overhead light. So there was a conflict. past; and addressing with both belfry, and cross. one, people sense the emptiness behind it, while even I wanted to make a cathedral that was an impor- mystery and candor the future that MB: This is true. However, the scale of the building Architecture, church architecture, describes visually the idea the smallest church can make you aware of the tremen- tant presence in the city, even for those who didn’t awaits each of us. Similarly, responds to the surrounding landscape. There’s a mon- of the sacred, which is a fundamental need of man. dous energy emanating from it. People aren’t stupid. believe. This is a discussion I had with the bishop, and Botta’s archetypal, hybrid forms umental aspect to architecture that I think is a crucial They don’t need a big, spectacular space. The small he agreed that to build a cathedral in a new city carried realized in stone acknowledge the part of architecture. There are two points of interac- Mankind has been capable of creating for itself this very paintings of Paul Klee can hold their own next to other, responsibilities that went beyond religion. When the past, assert the present, and tion: the exterior with the landscape; the interior with particular kind of space. There is great mystery in a church. larger paintings. It is good to know that people sense bishop asked me to do this project, he came to my stu- defiantly endure into the future. the domestic. In the city I like to play with these two value. We need to listen to the people, listen to what dio and said, “Make me something that becomes a point aspects as well. The monumental scale confronts the For me it is a great privilege to be confronted with the design they believe in. People know that they are born and that of reference for the city, because when I go into the city and the landscape. I think of the exterior of my of a church, because it shelters the most powerful themes of they must die. This mystery of life needs expression. town I don’t know where to go. There isn’t a commer- ABOVE A “magical eye,” an ocu- buildings as faces, or totems, like the architecture of the cial street, there isn’t a piazza or a gathering spot.” lus opening to the sky, provides past—Renaissance palaces, for example, which have humanity: birth, marriage, death. JD: A church embodies, in its purest form, the funda- Since then, other things have been constructed, but the focal point of the Museum of very dignified facades. It’s a form a resistance to the mental elements of architecture: light, threshold, and the when I built the cathedral there was nothing in the city Modern Art, San Francisco banalities of the new. After I designed the windows at Tamaro, I real- concept of passage both physical and metaphysical. that joined the people. In this strange landscape I made (1989/90–95). The windowless, ized that an image should be there. I asked Cucchi to ABOVE The Parish Church of the Could you discuss this in terms of the cathedral at Evry? an element that provided the city with a central image, a brick-clad building has a JD: Let’s discuss the relationship of photography to make these paintings, which are based on the prayers to Blessed Odorico has an encom- point of reference. It is a place for the faithful, but for fortresslike, totemic identity that architecture. the Virgin that were provided by Padre Giovanni Pozzi. passing circular nave lit by a MB: I’m going to make a little digression. My culture is the nonbeliever, too, it’s a presence, a place of silence, a is appropriate to its function as an Cucchi wanted to paint faces, but then in Germany I round skylight inset with Botta’s an ecclesiastical culture in the sense that the history of place for meditation that is available to everybody. art shelter. Its monumental, hori- MB: There is a rapport between the two because pho- saw an exhibit of his work that depicted hands that I trademark herringbone-pattern architecture that I know—90 percent—is the history of It’s a bit like a theater. The theater is also for those zontal geometries also are a means tography is a form of expression. We cannot think, really liked because hands make a gesture of prayer: mullions. The exterior colonnade architecture of churches: pagan temples, medieval, ren- who don’t go to the theater because it’s a place of collec- of visually asserting its presence however, that photography represents architecture. hands open to give, hands open to receive. reappears inside, this time follow- aissance, baroque, neoclassical churches. My models are tive imagination. It’s a place where people go to buy a in the densely built Yerba Buena Photography can approximate, but architecture bases At Tamaro, hands became a leitmotif for the ing the perimeter of the nave and ecclesiastical models, not civil or military ones. So even ticket to dream. People think, “My city is rich because it district. Because they preserve itself on the changing of light. Light is the generator of metaphoric illustrations of the Madonna: Mary as a reinforcing the ideas of protection as a layman, I am very indebted to the history of ecclesi- has a theater—even if I don’t go to the theater.” A values in a society lacking them, space. Without light, there is no space. If we closed boat, as a flowering almond during the confines of win- and communal strength. astical architecture. The challenge of designing a church church is a rich addition to a city, even for those who Botta considers museums, church- these windows, this room would disappear. ter, as an olive, as a cloud, as the moon, as the sea, as a is that in order to express spiritual values, you have to don’t go to church. It becomes a human institution like a es, and libraries the critical circle, as the city on the hill, as the sun, as a rose, as a express corporeal values as well—physical and material library, a bank, a stadium. So I tried to give that kind of structures of our time. JD: A photograph can never capture the movement pomegranate rich with gracious seeds, as a column, as a values. A work well done has its own spirituality. I have significance to the cathedral. For the faithful, there is inherent in a building, its relationship to its site, the restorative herb for our dry hearts, as a tall pine tree, as never worried about symbolic values. I don’t trust them. even more value, but even for the nonbeliever, it’s materials used. Your buildings are strikingly different in the queen’s road, as a fortress, as a lighthouse, as a First, a church has to have a material value—it has to important to have a cathedral in his or her city. person than they appear in photographs. shadow, as an illustrated book that discovers the won- work in terms of construction, light, tactility. The mate- ders of the word. rial is a sensual factor. It’s not plastic. All these aspects, JD: Many believe that a crucial function of architecture MB: With every representation of architecture that I Padre Giovanni was given the grace to guide if they are well done contribute to its symbolic value. is to provide visual orientation: the reassurance of see, I try to imagine what the building is like in reality. Cucchi in creating these ancient images, which are

14 15 derived from the great oral tradition of the Madonna. architect. What have you taken from the past and what They are painted prayers. They are sacred poems of have you left behind? great profundity that are based on a primitive culture, far removed from the present day, the culture of the MB: When I do a house, I would also like it to be the farmers who saw the Madonna in the moon, in the cave of a primitive man. When I’m tired, when I’m grass. It is very beautiful. bored, the house becomes the ultimate refuge. But the The interior at Tamaro was painted black to house is not only mine; the house also encompasses the negate space. The light enters from small, low windows, myth of the group, the collective—the family and soci- like the light in a cave or a grotto. The light highlights ety. The house connects with history and memory. The RIGHT The Cathedral of the ABOVE The Evry Cathedral does Cucchi’s paintings. It is not a celebration of space, it’s a house has a very strong social role. It enables communi- Resurrection (1988–95) at Evry, not have an easily identified front non-space. When people go outside, they see the moun- cation, because man only lives in context with others. In France, is located just south of entrance, much less a heroic tains and the vista, but inside they must return to their primitive societies, the house coincides with the idea of Paris in what was a new, nonde- facade. This feature, common to essential solitude. a collective life. There wasn’t just one, there were two, script development. Botta’s unique many of Botta’s buildings, forces Tamaro’s design is intended to control the form of there were three. This collectivity protected one’s pri- cathedral broke with all stereotypi- a confrontation with the building’s the mountain. It belongs to the mountain. I pulled the vacy, yet allowed one to feel part of a group. This senti- cal notions of monumental ecclesi- three dimensions. In fact, the only pathway from the mountain and extended it outward. ment survives in the subconscious of man and this is an astical architecture and, in doing part of the structure that can be The walkway is above, the church is important value to retain. so, provided the city with a sym- construed as facade is the inclined Praise here means the below. It’s as if it’s a correction of the bolic and literal center. A truncat- plane of the roof, another instance profile of the mountain. It’s not really a JD: Can the values of the private home be transferred ed cylinder, the cathedral is 111_ of Botta’s subverting expectations. glory of God, where construction. I did not want to make a to the church? feet (34 meters) at its highest The cylindrical shell is punctuated “glory of God” means tiny church but to develop the horizon point with an exterior diameter of with bands of diminutive keyhole underneath it. What was attractive was MB: Our first encounter when we enter a church is with 126 feet (38.4 meters). It is made windows that emphasize rather His manifestation in the development of an external, horizon- silence, and then with a return to memory. A church is of reinforced concrete clad inside than diminish the solidity of the the creatures he creat- tal pathway that leads to the kernels of impossible without memory, a church is the location of and out with some 800,000 red wall. the project, the chapel itself. I like to walk memory. In a church, a person is confronted with the bricks from Toulouse, an homage ed. The perception of on top of the pathway and feel the empti- immensity of the world. In a church a person always to the artisans of the medieval this glory can be ness underneath. feels very small. This is a magical aspect of a church. French cathedrals and the local The church is a house that puts a believer in a dimen- masonry tradition. The sloping arrived at through JD: When will construction start on the sion where he or she is the protagonist. The sacred glass roof is inset with an equilat- contemplation of all chapel at Malpensa Airport? directly lives in the collective. Man becomes a partici- eral triangular whose shape pant in a church, even if he never says anything. defines the three light sources that creation from inani- MB: Construction starts this year. It’s all illuminate the interior. A ring of mate elements to the made of red stone, even the floor, which I JD: A church, of all building types, is a place where you lime trees, like a green halo, chose deliberately to contrast the interna- stop and look. In a house or a bank, you move through marks a walkway along the upper summit which is tional style used in airports. It will be a without looking. reaches of the church. human nature, or place where you can feel the culture of intuitively and with the region. I’d like to think that when MB: Yes, the church is the archetype of architecture. BELOW Overhead skylights flood people enter the chapel, they will find a When I design one, I have a special responsibility. Evry’s interior with light. The immediacy. One is place of light and stone. When I design a bank, I have to resolve the bank’s lack of internal shadow and swept away in ecstasy. problems. When I do a theater, I must deal with the stained glass—hallmarks of the JD: Airport chapels used to be a standard theatrical machine. In contrast, a church is simple. The medieval cathedral interior— —Padre Giovanni Pozzi, fixture, and now that air travel is so com- essential rite, the liturgy, can happen on a field. It’s not proved controversial. Botta A LITANY IN PAINT, mon, they are disappearing. Your project complicated. It is the communal house, the house of the designed the wood furnishings, FROM THE CHAPEL OF at Malpensa is an anomaly. faithful. When you go into a church, you have to look marble altar, and the circular bap- MONTE TAMARO, 1994. around. It’s not a theater where you wait for something tismal font inserted into the steps MB: The airport chapel interests me to happen. When you enter a church, you already are rising to the altar. because models from the past do not part of what has transpired and will transpire there. exist. A church in the middle of an airport is a curious This is extraordinary. JD: I feel that way when I finish a book. You have no entity. But the chapel is not just another service provid- When I was a child, I would go to Como with my control over who picks it up, when they open or close it, ed by the airport. I intend it to be a presence. It is a mother. She was a religious woman and she would go or how they are affected by it. place for travelers and for people who work at the air- into the churches she would find along the way. She port. If someone has two hours, instead of reading the would light a candle and pray. I would sit there in the MB: Louis Kahn said, “Architecture doesn’t exist, what newspaper, they can find a place of silence. It is church and dream. The light well at the San Francisco exists is the making of architecture.” Building is archi- designed as a flower with three petals. Between the Museum of Art comes from my childhood experiences tecture. The rest of it is theory, history, poetry. petals you can look out the windows and see the air- in churches. I’d look up at the cupola, at the sky, and the planes. It will have two spaces: one a place with biblical angels painted up there would come down to me. It was JD: When people ask me how to become a writer, I tell quotations; the other, a space for the altar, so people can fantastic. them, “If you want to be a writer, you have to write.” decide for themselves which part of the church is most It’s true, when you go into a church, you look at For some, it’s shocking news. appropriate for them. the architecture. Where the church is located, the place of the faithful, is much more important that its function. MB: The last time I saw Louis Kahn, in Venice, he said, JD: How do you move beyond the image of the tradi- The function exists in an arc of time that is very limited, “You can become a good architect, but you have to tional church—its plan, orientation, symbolism—which but the church remains. For this reason, I respect the work, work, and work.” is so deeply ingrained in our collective memory and has location of churches. I have a great esteem for places of been for at least a thousand years, to create something different religions, of all religions, because religious JD: You have worked hard. new that is still meaningful? places provide testimony and have extraordinary sym- I like proposals but I like the realization of a proj- bolic value. The church preserves sacredness in its very ect a hundred times more. An unrealized project exists MB: Leave me some time! I am not through working MB: This is very difficult. I think the new has to be full location. This sense of the sacred cannot be found in a only in the world of my imagination, in my ideas, theo- yet. For me, the construction site is very emotional. of memory. The new symbolic values have to be rooted bank, a library, a theater. ries, and poetry. But the realization of a building means When you are actually making the building, it is the in the great past. Le Corbusier described it beautifully that the world in my head has become a reality. If I had most beautiful time. When it’s done, it doesn’t interest when he put the cross in Ronchamp, saying “The cross JD: Your round stone buildings recall the ancient kivas, just imagined the Mogno Chapel, it would have stayed you any more. is a sign for all Christianity. When I saw the cross come the worship spaces of the American Indians. You should in a drawer with no meaning. I like to see people there, into the church, which was brought in by the workmen, build a church in the American Southwest. There, your see them continue to go there. I ask myself, “What are JD: A final question: Are you finding God? I knew the work site was finished. All of humanity, at monumental forms would find their perfect home. these people looking for?” Did you see the photogra- that point, took possession of the church.” It is difficult pher there today? What was he looking for? The weath- MB: I have not found Him yet. I am searching for Him. to decide where to place a cross on a church because the MB: If I could construct only churches, I would let go er wasn’t good, it was a bad day to photograph. It is a cross is such a potent symbol of Christianity. of everything else. Churches are the ultimate theme for big mystery. It’s nice to see a work of art realized and to architecture. The more you work with this theme, the be part of its continuing reality. The finished work is a JD: You have said that memory is the territory of the more depth you can realize with it. place of confrontation.

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