Thursday 4 April 2013

Architectural Style

Architectural style:

An architectural style is a specific method of construction, characterized by the features that make it notable. A style may include such elements as form, method of construction, materials, and regional character. Most architecture can be classified as a chronology of styles which changes over time. These may reflect changing fashions, changing beliefs and religions, or the emergence of new ideas and new technology which make new styles possible.
Styles therefore emerge from the history of a society and are documented in the subject of architectural history. At any time several styles may be fashionable, and when a style changes it usually does so gradually, as architects learn and adapt to new ideas. The new style is sometimes only a rebellion against an existing style, such as post-modernism (means "after modernism") which has in recent years found its own language and split into a number of styles with other names.
Styles often spread to other places, so that the style at its source continues to develop in new ways while other countries follow with their own twist. For instance, the Renaissance began in Italy around 1425 and spread to all of western Europe over the next 200 years, with the French, Belgian, German, English and Spanish Renaissance being recognisably the same style, but with unique characteristics. A style may also spread through Colonialism, either by foreign colonies learning from their home country, or by settlers moving to a new land. One example is the Spanish missions in California, brought by Spanish priests in the late 18th century and built in a unique style.
After a style has gone out of fashion, there are often revivals and re-interpretations. For instance, classicism has been revived many times and found fashion as neoclassicism (means "new classicism"). Each time it is revived, it is different. The Spanish mission style was revived 100 later as the Mission Revival, and that soon evolved into the Spanish Colonial Revival.
Vernacular architecture works slightly differently and is listed separately. It is the native method of construction used by local people, usually using labour-intensive methods and local materials, and usually for small structures such as rural cottages. It varies from region to region even within a country, and takes little account of national styles or technology. As western society has developed, vernacular styles have mostly become outmoded by new technology and national building standards.













Chronology of styles:

Prehistoric

Early civilizations developed, often independently, in scattered locations around the globe. The architecture was often a mixture of styles in timber cut from local forests, and stone hewn from local rocks. Most of the timber has gone, although the earthworks remain. Impressive, massive stone structures have survived.

Ancient Americas

Mediterranean and Middle-East Civilizations:

Ancient Near East and Mesopotamia:

       Sumerian 5300-2000 BC

Iranian and Persian:

 

Islamic:



South Asia

Ancient India

Historic temple styles

Dravidian and Vesara temple styles

Other historic eras

Islamic influences

  • Indo-Saracenic Revival aka Hindu Style, Indo-Gothic, Mughal-Gothic, Neo-Mughal, Hindu-Gothic late 19th century (British India aka The Raj)

Also

Classical Antiquity

The architecture of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, derived from the ancient Mediterranean civilisations such as at Knossos on Crete. They developed highly refined systems for proportions and style, using mathematics and geometry.

The Dark Ages

The European "Dark Ages" are generally taken to run from the end of the Roman Empire around 400 AD to around 1000 AD. Relatively little is known of this period, but Christianity (spread by the Romans) was already making a significant impact on European culture, and the Romans left a technological and social legacy.

Western Europe

Eastern Europe

Medieval Europe

The dominance of the Church over everyday life was expressed in grand spiritual designs which emphasized piety and sobriety. The Romanesque style was simple and austere. The Gothic style heightened the effect with heavenly spires, pointed arches and religious carvings.[3]

Romanesque

Associated styles

Gothic

1140-1520

The Renaissance and its successors

1425-1660+. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread through Europe, rebelling against the all-powerful Church, by placing Man at the centre of his world instead of God.[4] The Gothic spires and pointed arches were replaced by classical domes and rounded arches, with comfortable spaces and entertaining details, in a celebration of humanity. The Baroque style was a florid development of this 200 years later, largely by the Catholic Church to restate its religious values.

United Kingdom

Spain

Colonial

Baroque

1600-1800, up to 1900

Neoclassicism

1720-1837 and on. A time often depicted as a rural idyll by the great painters, but in fact was a hive of early industrial activity, with small kilns and workshops springing up wherever materials could be mined or manufactured. After the Renaissance, neoclassical forms were developed and refined into new styles for public buildings and the gentry.

Neoclassical


Revivalism and Orientalism

19th- early 20th century. The Victorian Era was a time of giant leaps forward in technology and society, such as iron bridges, aqueducts, sewer systems, roads, canals, trains and factories. As engineers, inventors and businessmen they reshaped much of the British Empire, including the UK, India, Australia, South Africa and Canada, and influenced Europe and the USA. Architecturally, they were revivalists who modified old styles to suit new purposes.

Revivals started before the Victorian Era

Victorian revivals

Orientalism

Revivals in North America

Other late 19th century

Rural styles


Reactions to the Industrial Revolution

1880-1940. As a reaction to the dirty towns, urbanisation and mechanisation, movements appeared calling for a return to wholesome living, craftsmanship and a connection with nature. Some of this was manifested in a taste for exotic cultures and spirituality.

Arts and Crafts in Europe

Arts and Crafts in the USA

Modernism

1880+. The Industrial Revolution had brought steel, plate glass, and mass-produced components. These enabled a brave new world of bold structural frames, with clean lines and plain or shiny surfaces. In the early stages, a popular motto was "decoration is a crime". In Eastern Europe the Communists rejected the West's decadent ways, and modernism developed in a markedly more bureaucratic, sombre and monumental fashion.

Modernism under communism

New Tradition

 

1945-

Other 20th century

Post-Modernism and the 21st century



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Famous architects

Early architects:

 

Aa:

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Aa, possibly AaAa, was an ancient Egyptian architect and construction supervisor. His title was "Overseer of construction workers" or "Great Overseer of construction workers". He lived in the time of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (between 2080 BCE and 1640 BCE).
Aa is one of several names on a funerary stele from the northern necropolis of Abydos. The connection between Aa and the depicted Sahepu is unclear. The reading of the name is problematic; it is not clear whether the first element "Aa" (ancient Egyptian for "great") forms part of the name or whether it's an adjective as part of the title.

Abbot Suger:

Life

Suger's family origins are unknown. Several times in his writings he suggests that his was a humble background, though this may just be a topos or convention of autobiographical writing. In 1091, at the age of ten, Suger was given as an oblate to the abbey of St. Denis, where he began his education. He trained at the priory of Saint-Denis de l'Estrée, and there first met the future king Louis VI of France. From 1104 to 1106, Suger attended another school, perhaps that attached to the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. In 1106 he became secretary to the abbot of Saint-Denis. In the following year he became provost of Berneval in Normandy, and in 1109 of Toury. In 1118, Louis VI sent Suger to the court of Pope Gelasius II at Maguelonne (at Montpellier, Gulf of Lyon), and he lived from 1121 to 1122 at the court of Gelasius's successor, Calixtus II.
On his return from Maguelonne, Suger became abbot of St-Denis. Until 1127, he occupied himself at court mainly with the temporal affairs of the kingdom, while during the following decade he devoted himself to the reorganization and reform of St-Denis. In 1137, he accompanied the future king, Louis VII, into Aquitaine on the occasion of that prince's marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and during the Second Crusade served as one of the regents of the kingdom (1147–1149). He bitterly opposed the king's divorce, having himself advised the marriage. Although he disapproved of the Second Crusade, he himself, at the time of his death, had started preaching a new crusade.
Abbot Suger's chalice
Suger served as the friend and counsellor both of Louis VI and Louis VII. He urged the king to destroy the feudal bandits, was responsible for the royal tactics in dealing with the communal movements, and endeavoured to regularize the administration of justice. He left his abbey, which possessed considerable property, enriched and embellished by the construction of a new church built in the nascent Gothic style. Suger wrote extensively on the construction of the abbey in Liber de Rebus in Administratione sua Gestis, Libellus Alter de Consecratione Ecclesiae Sancti Dionysii, and Ordinatio. In the 1940s, the prominent art-historian Erwin Panofsky claimed that the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite influenced the architectural style of the abbey of St. Denis, though later scholars have argued against such a simplistic link between philosophy and architectural form.Similarly the assumption by 19th century French authors that Suger was the 'designer' of St Denis (and hence the 'inventor' of Gothic architecture) have been almost entirely discounted by more recent scholars. Instead he is generally seen as having been a bold and imaginative patron who encouraged the work of an innovative (but now unknown) master mason.
A chalice once owned by Suger is now in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

 


Contribution to Architecture

Gothic ambulatory at Saint-Denis

Further information: Gothic architecture and Basilica of St Denis
Abbot Suger, friend and confidant of the French Kings, Louis VI and Louis VII, decided in about 1137, to rebuild the great Church of Saint-Denis, the site of Coronation of the French monarch since 754.
Suger began with the West front, reconstructing the original Carolingian façade with its single door. He designed the façade of Saint-Denis to be an echo of the Roman Arch of Constantine with its three-part division and three large portals to ease the problem of congestion. The rose window above the West portal is the earliest-known such example, although Romanesque circular windows preceded it in general form.
At the completion of the west front in 1140, Abbot Suger moved on to the reconstruction of the eastern end, leaving the Carolingian nave in use. He designed a choir (chancel) that would be suffused with light. To achieve his aims, his masons drew on the several new features which evolved or had been introduced to Romanesque architecture, the pointed arch, the ribbed vault, the ambulatory with radiating chapels, the clustered columns supporting ribs springing in different directions and the flying buttresses which enabled the insertion of large clerestory windows.
The new structure was finished and dedicated on 11 June 1144, in the presence of the King. The Abbey of Saint-Denis thus became the prototype for further building in the royal domain of northern France. It is often cited as the first building in the Gothic style. A hundred years later, the old nave of Saint-Denis was rebuilt in the Gothic style, gaining, in its transepts, two spectacular rose windows.

 

Writings

Suger became the foremost historian of his time. He wrote a panegyric on Louis VI (Vita Ludovici regis), and collaborated in writing the perhaps more impartial history of Louis VII (Historia gloriosi regis Ludovici). In his Liber de rebus in administratione sua gestis, and its supplement Libellus de consecratione ecclesiae S. Dionysii, he treats of the improvements he had made to St Denis, describes the treasure of the church, and gives an account of the rebuilding. Suger's works served to imbue the monks of St Denis with a taste for history and called forth a long series of quasi-official chronicles.

Anthemius of Tralles:

For other people called "Anthemius", see Anthemius (disambiguation).

Anthemius of Tralles (c. 474 – before 558; Greek: Ἀνθέμιος ὁ Τραλλιανός) was a Greek professor of Geometry in Constantinople and architect, who collaborated with Isidore of Miletus to build the church of Hagia Sophia by the order of Justinian I. Anthemius came from an educated family, one of five sons of Stephanus of Tralles, a physician. Of his brothers, Dioscorus followed his father's profession in Tralles; Alexander became at Rome one of the most celebrated medical men of his time; Olympius was deeply versed in Roman jurisprudence; and Metrodorus was a distinguished grammarian in Constantinople.
As an architect he is best known for replacing the old church of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople in 532; his daring plans for the church strikingly displayed his knowledge. His skills seem also to have extended to engineering for he repaired the flood defences at Daras.
Anthemius was also a capable mathematician. He described the string construction of the ellipse[1] and he wrote a book on conic sections, which was excellent preparation for designing the elaborate vaulting of Hagia Sophia. He compiled a survey of mirror configurations in his work on remarkable mechanical devices which was known to Arab mathematicians such as Ibn al-Haytham.
A fragment of his treatise On burning-glasses was published as Περί παραδόξων μηχανημάτων ("Concerning wondrous machines") by L. Dupuy in 1777, and also appeared in 1786 in the forty-second volume of the Histoire de l'Academie des Instrumentistes. A. Westermann gave a revised edition of it in his Παραδοξογράφοι (Scriptores rerum mirabilium Graeci, "Greek marvel-writers") in 1839. In the course of the constructions for surfaces to reflect to one and the same point

  1. all rays in whatever direction passing through another point,
  2. a set of parallel rays,
Anthemius assumes a property of an ellipse not found in Apollonius's work, that the equality of the angles subtended at a focus by two tangents drawn from a point, and having given the focus and a double ordinate he goes on to use the focus and directrix to obtain any number of points on a parabola—the first instance on record of the practical use of the directrix.

13th century architects:

 

 

Villard de Honnecourt:

Villard de Honnecourt (Wilars dehonecort, fol. 1v; Vilars de Honecourt, fol. 15v) was a 13th-century artist from Picardy in northern France. He is known to history only through a surviving portfolio of 33 sheets of parchment containing about 250 drawings dating from the 1220s/1240s, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (MS Fr 19093). The great variety of subjects (religious and secular figures suitable for sculpture, and architectural plans, elevations and details, ecclesiastical objects and mechanical devices, some with annotations), makes it difficult to determine its purpose. Other subjects such as animals and human figures also appear.
The traditional view, since the discovery of the portfolio in the mid-19th century, is that Villard was an itinerant architect/mason/builder, but there is no evidence of him ever working as an architect or in any other identifiable profession. Nonetheless, it is clear from his drawings that he was interested in architecture and that he traveled to some of the major ecclesiastical building sites of his day to record details of these buildings. His drawing of one of the west facade towers of Laon Cathedral and those of radiating chapels and a main vessel bay, interior and exterior, of Reims Cathedral are of particular interest.
Villard tells us, with pride, that he had been in many lands (Jai este en m[u]lt de tieres) and that he made a trip to Hungary where he remained many days (maint ior), but he does not say why he went there or who sent him. It has recently been proposed that he may have been a lay agent or representative of the cathedral chapter of Cambrai Cathedral to obtain a relic of St. Elizabeth of Hungary who had made a donation to the cathedral chapter and to whom the chapter dedicated one of the radiating chapels in their new cathedral chevet.
Among the mechanical devices Villard sketched are a perpetual-motion machine, a water-driven saw, a number of automata, lifting devices, war engines (a trebuchet) as well as a number of anatomical and geometric sketches for portraiture and architecture. The claim that he drew a simple escapement mechanism, the first known in the West, is now questioned.
Villard's vast diversity in his sketchbook has caused him to be compared to such great minds as Leonardo da Vinci, who also specialized in many different categories of art and science.

Robert of Luzarches:

Robert of Luzarches (born in Luzarches near Pontoise towards the end of the twelfth century) was a French architect who worked on the cathedral of Notre Dame in Amiens.
He is said to have been summoned to Paris by King Philip II who employed him in beautifying the city, and to have had a share in the work on Notre Dame de Paris. The old Amiens cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1218 and Bishop Evrard de Fouilloy had it rebuilt in Gothic style. An inscription made in 1288 in the "labyrinth" of the floor (later removed) testified that the building had begun in 1220, and names "Robert, called of Luzarches", as the architect, and as his successors, Thomas de Cormont and the latter's son. The work was completed in later centuries. Viollet-le-Duc sees a fact of great significance in the employment of the layman, Robert; but it is not accurate that in Romanesque times the architects were always bishops, priests, or monks. Robert was not long employed on the cathedral.
Under the successor of Bishop Evrard, who apparently died in 1222, Cormont appears as the architect. Before 1240 Bishop Bernard put a choir window in the provisionally completed cathedral. An intended alteration of the original plan was not used in the finished building. In his day it was called the "Gothic Parthenon". It is more spacious than Notre Dame in Paris and considerably larger than the cathedral of Reims. But Robert's creation became a standard, through France and beyond, on account of the successful manner in which weight and strength are counterbalanced and of the consistently Gothic style. The design presents a middle aisle and two side aisles, though the choir has five aisles and the transept has the width of seven aisles. The choir is flanked by seven chapels; that in the centre (the Lady chapel) projecting beyond the others in French style. The nave is about 470 ft. in length, 164 ft. in breadth (213 ft. in the transept), and 141 ft. in height.

14th century architects:

 

 

Filippo Calendario:

Filippo Calendario (died 16 April 1355, in Venice, Italy) was an architect, a designer of the 14th century Doge's Palace, Venice. He was executed for treason.

Design of Doge's Palace

By the end of the 13th century the existing Doge's Palace in Venice needed enlarging. Rebuilding commenced around 1340,though interrupted for several years because of the plague.
Calendario is attributed by some sources as the first architect or, at least, a collaborator. Calendario first appears in official records in 1340, when he is described as a master of two small boats, used to transport stone for construction. By 1341 he was the owner of five boats. This makes it likely he was also a stonemason.
The new building was in the Venetian Gothic style, low and squat to cope with the poor ground conditionsHowever, the Palace is noticeably built in two phases and this is believed to be because, in 1355, Calendario was executed.

Conspiracy and execution

The new Doge of Venice, Marino Faliero (elected 1354), had ambitions to become Lord of Venice. However, the plot was uncovered and the conspirators arrested. Calendario was one of those found guilty of treason and, with the leader of the conspiracy Bertuccio Israello, sentenced to be hanged on 16 April 1355. They were both hanged from the balcony of the new Palace, reportedly with gags in their mouths. Calendario's son was also amongst the guilty men and later he was also hanged from the building.

 

Recent Architects :

Adolf Loos:

Adolf Loos architect

Adolf Loos (1870-1933) ranks as one of the most important pioneers of the modern movement in architecture. Ironically, his influence was based largely on a few interior designs and a body of controversial essays. Adolf Loos 's buildings were rigorous examples of austere beauty, ranging from conventional country cottages to planar compositions for storefronts and residences. His built compositions were little known outside his native Austria during his early years of practice.

Adolf Loos was born in Brno (Bruenn), Moravia, now Czech republic, on December 10, 1870. Adolf Loos was introduced to the craft of building at an early age while working in his father's stone masonry shop. At the age of seventeen. Adolf Loos attended the Royal and Imperial State College at Reichenberg in Bohemia. In 1889 Adolf Loos was drafted for one year of service in the Austrian army. From 1890 to 1893, Adolf Loos studied architecture at the Technical College in Dres den. As a student, Adolf Loos was particularly interested in the works of the classicist Schinkel and, above all, the works of Vitruvius. Adolf Loos 's developing tastes were considerably broadened during a three-year stay in the United States, which began in 1893. The 23-year-old architect was particularly impressed by what Adolf Loos regarded as the innovative efficiency of U.S. industrial buildings, clothing, and household furnishings. In 1896, Adolf Loos returned to Vienna where Adolf Loos began working in the building firm of Carl Mayreder.



Albert Kahn:

Albert Kahn architect
 Albert Kahn (1869-1942) was born in Rhaunen, Germany, the oldest son of a rabbi. The Kahns and their six children emigrated to the United States in 1880. Albert Kahn received his professional training as an apprentice to an architect with the firm of Mason and Rice in Detroit. In 1891, Albert Kahn was awarded a scholarship for a year's travel in Europe. During his travels Albert Kahn met the young architect Henry Bacon, and the two of them traveled together in Italy, France, Germany, and Belgium. In 1896, Albert Kahn married Ernestine Krolik and formed a partnership with George W. Nettleton and Alexander B. Trowbridge. Trowbridge left to become dean of the Cornell University School of Architecture in 1897, Nettleton died in 1900, and by 1902, Albert Kahn was in practice alone. Albert Kahn 's practice is intenation-ally known for industrial work; his more traditional designs are less well known.

Because Albert Kahn practiced in Detroit, Albert Kahn 's career closely followed the growth of the automotive industry. Albert Kahn was introduced to Henry B. Joy in 1902. Joy was instrumental in Albert Kahn 's selection for projects at the University of Michigan, and when Joy became manager of the Packard Motor Car Co. in 1903, Albert Kahn was named architeet for tbe company. That same year, Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Co.


Aldo Rossi:

Aldo Rossi architect
 Aldo Rossi (born 1931), one of the most influential architects during the period 1972-1988, has accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in three distinct areas: theory, drawing, and architecture. After receiving his architecture degree at the Polytechnic University in Milan in 1959, Aldo Rossi served as a course assistant to prominent architects Ludovico Quaroni and Carlo Aymonino. Aldo Rossi became a faculty member in the School of Architecture in Milan in 1965 and at the University in Venice in 1975. In addition to these regular appointments, his growing fame brought him positions as a professor in Zurich, Spain, and the United States. Aldo Rossi 's career as a theorist began to take shape during the years Aldo Rossi worked with Ernesto Rogers on the leading Italian architecture magazine Casabella-Continuita (1955-1964). In 1966 Aldo Rossi published the book The Architecture of the City, which subsequently was translated into several languages and enjoyed enormous international success. Spurning the then fashionable debates on style, Aldo Rossi instead criticized the lack of understanding of the city in current architectural practice. Aldo Rossi argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of particular interest are urban artifacts that withstand the passage of time. Despite the modern movement polemics against monuments, for example. Aldo Rossi held that the city remembers its past and uses that memory through monuments; that is, monuments give structure to the city.


Frank Lloyd Wright:

Frank Lloyd Wright architect
 If there is any one architect about whom the proverbial John Q. Public knows something, it is surely Frank Lloyd Wright. People who have not read a word of his writings do not hesitate to invoke his name. Many who are not the least a word bit familiar with the principles of organic architecture crave to live in a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Simon and Garfunkel have even sung about him. It is no exaggeration to say that there is something of the legendary about Frank Lloyd Wright. Further, Frank Lloyd Wright was a legend of sorts even in his own time. In no small part, this was due to Wright 's flair for self promotion and scandal-ridden personal life, as is made clear in a recent biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, Many Masks. But Frank Lloyd Wright 's genius and originality played a much greater role in the creation of the Frank Lloyd Wright legend.


Frank Owen Gehry:

Frank Owen Gehry architect

Frank O. Gehry is the principal of the Los Angeles, California, architecture firm of Frank O. Gehry & Associates. Frank Gehry 's designs, which explore the possibilities inherent both in the methods of constructing and assembling architecture and in the formal composition of architectural forms, have been built or proposed all across the United States. Frank Gehry is the recipient of the Arnold W. Bnumer Award of the American Institute of Arts and Sciences (1983) and of numerous local and national design awards.

Gehry was born Frank Goldberg in Toronto, Canada, in 1929. Frank Gehry moved to Los Angeles at an early age and completed his architectural education at the University of Southern California. Frank Gehry subsequently worked for Wdton Becket & Associates (1957-1968) and Victor Gruen (1968-1961) in Los Angeles, as well as for Andre Remondet in Paris (1961). In 1962, Frank Gehry founded his own firm, and embarked on the design of a large variety of residential [Hillcrest Apartments (1962), Bixby Green (1969)], commercial [Kay Jewelers Stores (1963-1965), Joseph Magnin Stores (1968)], office [Rouse Company Headquarters (1974)], and institutional projects.

Kevin Roche:

Kevin Roche architect
 The firm Kevin Roche (1922-), John Dinkeloo (1918-1981) and Associates has produced some of contemporary America's most significant and influential civic and corporate architecture. Recognizing new social conditions within postindustrial society, the firm has designed buildings that focus on the changing role of public space and its relationship to the individual. Working primarily in the established centers of older American cities and their vast emerging regional fringes, the firm has contributed to the transformation and maturity of such basic twentieth-century building types as the corporate headquarters and the skyscraper. Informing this typological research is a continuing free manipulation of the legacy of modern archiecture. Consistently choosing an outlook both pragmatic and visionary, the firm has shunned conventional solutions, pursuing instead technological and social innovation patiently within the context of present cultural conditions.

 

Le Corbusier:


Le Corbusier architect

Le Corbusier was born Charles Edouard Jeannerct on October 6, 1887, in LaChaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Le Corbusier was the second son of Edouard Jeanneret, a dial painter in the town's renowned watch industry, and Madame Jeannerct-Perrct, a musician and piano teacher.

The family proudly traced its ancestry to the Cathars, who fled to the Jura Mountains during the Albigensian Wars of the twelfth century, and the French Huguenots, who migrated to Switzerland following the Edict of Nantes (1598). La Chaux-de-Fonds' tradition of offering refuge includes both Rousseau and Bakunin. His family's Calvinism, love of the arts, and enthusiasm for the Jura Mountains, were all formative influences on the young Le Corbusier; Charles L'Eplattenier, a teacher at the local art school, dominated his education.

 

Mario Botta:

Mario Botta architect

Mario Botta, contemporary architect, lives in Ticino, a small canton in southern Switzerland, in an extraordinary beautiful landscape separated by the Alps from the rest of Switzerland. Most of his projects have been built within a few miles of Lugano where Mario Botta works. This area reflects Switzerland's peculiar situation: politically it is Swiss, yet culturally it is Italian. This setting has somehow produced an unusual empathy between the architects practicing here, and has inspired what Mario Botta describes as "a love for one's own habitat, in a constructive tradition which is extremely rigorous and closely fitted to the minimal conditions and demands of living'.

Mario Botta was born in Mendrisio on April 1, 1943. He attended primary school at Genestrerio and secondary school at Mendrisio. By his own admission, Mario Botta never liked going to school; as long as he could remember, Mario Botta went againist his will. At age 15, Mario Botta quit school and became a draftsman in the architectural studio of Carloni and Camenish in Lugano, Switzerland. In that capacity, Mario Botta soon realized that his natural talent for drawing could lead to his final career choice in architecture. After three years as a draftsman, Mario Botta became an apprentice and was given his first major design project. Mario Botta was put in charge of the design for a new complex to replace the parish house of Genestrerio that was to be demolished when a village road was widened. The excitement and enthusiasm with which Mario Botta developed and completed this first major design responsibility has never left him.

 



 

 

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