9 Quotes & Sayings By Mario Botta

Mario Botta was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1949. He describes his career as that of an "architect without a building". The body of his work is drawn from his many travels, especially across the world to places he has never been before. His rectilinear buildings are organized around a central axis or line, which can be seen as an image of the trip Read more

The logic of the architect is co-opted by the lines and surfaces of his spatial compositions. Botta's architecture is characterized by its formal constraints, but also by the freedom to create new relations between large-scale building elements that are not formally reduced to their simplest elements. Mario Botta has built buildings that are not only architectural spaces but also sites for meetings, events, performances and exhibitions.

1
For me, architecture is not just creating a space to protect people but to make them dream as well. Mario Botta
2
To me it was fascinating, the idea of going to university and studying a subject - architecture - that I had already faced in building some small houses. Mario Botta
3
Great architecture of the past was always clear. SFMOMA is still a simple building to understand. Mario Botta
4
Church architecture describes visually the idea of the sacred, which is a fundamental need of man. Mario Botta
5
The Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio comes from afar. Our land has a millennial history of emigrations: master masons, architects, builders, decorators, plasterers, artists from the world of building. Mario Botta
6
In 1996, I took advantage of some favourable circumstances to propose to the state of the Ticino Canton the foundation of the Academy of Architecture and, with it, an Italian-speaking university in Switzerland. Mario Botta
7
Buildings in modern cities have lost their metaphoric aspect. Much contemporary architecture is very fragmented and busy on the outside. It's like a skin or a skull, but you don't know what's inside. Mario Botta
8
A museum is a spiritual place. People lower their voices when they get close to art. Mario Botta