-Showcases Mario Botta's portfolio of projects and contemporary design talents in stunning full-colour photography, with detailed plans and drawings and comprehensive profile descriptions -Celebrates almost 40 works of this prolific architect, and is a superb compendium to IMAGES' highly successful Leading Architects Series -Profiles the insight into the influences of this firm and its practice, while capturing its vision for the future of design, emerging trends and influences that shapes its work We recognize Mario Botta's buildings for their strong presence. His architecture is not ephemeral. It shapes the mass firmly and precisely. It touches the ground with self-reliance. A building by Mario Botta is an autonomous object. It comprises an ordered world of its own make. It is standing in dialogue with the urban tissue, but it establishes its own order as if it aims at differentiation instead of integration. Architectural order represents the core of his personal idiom. It is a well structured, compositional order which organises everything into a whole, as an underlying thread that connects and brings together houses on the mountains to museums and churches, banks and commercial buildings to buildings on the ground and buildings underground, different buildings at different places in time. The themes that underlie Mario Botta's architecture are ties that connect and spines that support, common threads that bind one building to the next. His architecture is one of mass. It is then of no surprise that mass is the first thing to be defined and ordered, in his creative process. The volume of his buildings is mostly composed by one or more primary solids. Volume is thus an a-priori for Botta. It is conceived beforehand, the starting point to the adventure of architectural design.

This is the first book in English on the work of the architect Mario Botta, who lives in the Canton Ticino in southern Switzerland. Although he has built almost solely in Switzerland and for the most part in the Ticino, his library of the Capuchin monastery in Lugano, artisan center in Balerna, State Bank in Friberg, as well as his round house in Stabio have earned him an international reputation.

Mario Botta -- The Complete Works is the only complete edition of Botta's creative work co-designed and authorized by the architect himself; it is now internationally recognized as the definitive work on Botta. These volumes draw a complete picture of Mario Botta's creative work as an architect, furniture designer, and exhibition and stage designer. Volume highlights include the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the cathedral in Evry, the mountain church on Monte Tamaro (Ticino), the bank at Aeschenplatz, and the recently opened Tinguely museum, both of which are located in Basel. The newest projects are also introduced, such as the municipal library in Dortmund and the synagogue in Tel Aviv.

Mario Botta was born in Switzerland in 1943. Botta trained as a technical draftsman and was an assistant to Le Corbusier and later Louis Kahn. In 1970, he opened his own practice in Lugano, Switzerland. His approach is essentially modernist and he has been strongly influenced by both Carlo Scarpa and Louis Kahn. Botta's work is characterized by respect for topographical conditions and regional sensibilities and his designs generally emphasize craftsmanship and geometric order. He has attempted to reconcile traditional architectural symbolism with the aesthetic rules of the Modern Movement. Botta built exclusively in Switzerland during his early career, gaining international acclaim for such buildings as the Capuchin convent in Lugano, the Craft Centre in Balerna and the Administration Building for the Staatsbank in Fribourg.

Mario Botta (1943 geboren) studierte in Venedig Architektur bei Carlo Scarpa und er??ffnete 1970 sein eigenes B??ro in Lugano. Heute reicht seine T??tigkeit bis in die Vereinigten Staaten und den Fernen Osten. Weltber??hmt geworden ist Mario Botta durch seine zahlreichen Villen im Tessin: k??hl-elegante Bauten, die, oft an exponierter Lage situiert, einen spannungsvollen Dialog mit der Landschaft aufnehmen. Es sind visuelle Gebilde von magischer Wirkung. Ebenso beachtet sind Bottas Kirchenbauten, ob es sich nun um kleine Kapellen in den Tessiner Bergen oder um die Kathedrale von Evry bei Paris handelt, sowie seine Museumsgeb??ude (etwa das Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, das Tinguely Museum in Basel). Klare geometrische Grundformen, das Spiel von nat??rlichem Licht und Raum, die visuellen und haptischen Qualit??ten von Klinker und Natursteinen kennzeichnen Bottas Werke. Das vorliegende Studiopaperback dokumentiert das Gesamtschaffen Mario Bottas, einschlie??lich seiner Design-Entw??rfe.

"Mario Botta -- The Complete Works" is the only complete edition of Botta's creative work co-designed and authorized by the architect himself; it is now internationally recognized as the definitive work on Botta. These volumes draw a complete picture of Mario Botta's creative work as an architect, furniture designer, and exhibition and stage designer. Volume highlights include the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the cathedral in Evry, the mountain chuch on Monte Tamaro (Ticino), the bank at Aeschenplatz, and the recently opened Tinguely museum, both of which are located in Basel. The newest projects are also introduced, such as the municipal library in Dortmund and the synagogue in Tel Aviv.

Over the past decade, Mario Botta has focused his creativity on a series of public buildings of great significance, in locations across the globe, from Japan to Bolivia, from Tel Aviv to the Swiss Canton of Ticino. Designing projects that are both original and closely linked to their function and surroundings, the Swiss architect has made the public building his main concern. In this beautiful volume showcasing Botta's work, eleven public buildings erected between the early 1990s and today give evidence of his evolving style. Pino Musi's colour and black and white images and pictures of superb wooden models lavishly illustrate each project. Essays by Werner Oechslin, Cesare De Seta, Benedetto Gravagnuolo, Gabriele Cappellato and Botta himself introduce the works, which include the new synagogue in Tel Aviv, a monument for La Paz, the Tinguely Museum in Basle, an art gallery in Tokyo, the San Francisco MOCA, the cathedral of Evry, the church of San Giovanni at Mogno, the two parish churches of Pordenone and Sartirana di Merate, as well as the mobile theatre for the celebration of the 900th anniversary of the founding of the Swiss Foundation.

Mario Botta's buildings are structures of extraordinary visual power. How do they come into being? What are the constants in Botta's design process? What are the convictions behind them and the experiences derived from thirty years of creative work? This book answers these questions in three chapters, revolving around the themes architecture, town and design. For the first time the world-famous Ticino architect takes stock of his oeuvre in a concise and lucid essay form. Eighty sketches by Mario Botta elucidate the theoretical discourse.