Mario Botta

In France he is known for the cathedral of Evry, in the United-States for the SFMoma (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). But he is also the author of the Kyobo towers in Seoul to the Mart museum in Rovereto, in Italy. At the age of 66, the Swiss architect has produced a corpus of 300 projects. It is true that he started very young, since he signed his first creation – a house – at the age of 16 when he was a technical drawer at another architect’s firm. This book does not cover all of his creations but makes a census of the most significant. Whether we think of museums, of villas or of religious buildings (of which he is one of the greatest specialists – if we think of the Cymbalista synagogue in Tel-Aviv or the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Mogno Fusio in the Swiss Tessin), Botta is obsessed by a few simple volumes. Similar to certain antique architects, he works at them in an infinite number of variations: it is the case in particular of the circle, which he presents in solar disks, in portholes or in circular towers, often fit into a brick structure.

•Mario Botta, par Alessandra Coppa, Actes Sud, 2009, 120 p., 23 €, ISBN : 978-2-7427-8342-7