Quotes from Mario Botta

Artificial light is used because you can control it better. Technically, it is more homogeneous, more delicate, and less damaging to artwork. But I think it's interesting when the visitor can see variations in the light, when it is not only technical or suitable.

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.

There's no point in us designing synthetic laboratories that could just as well be in Dusseldorf or Helsinki. San Francisco has its light, which must be used.

A museum is a spiritual place. People lower their voices when they get close to art.

The architect works in the territory of memory.

There is great mystery in a church. For me, there is a great privilege to be confronted with the design of a church because it shelters the most powerful themes of humanity: birth, marriage, death.

I want to modernize the ancient. I prefer to work with materials formed naturally over thousands of years.

L'architecture transforme un état de nature, en état de culture.

Je suis un bâtisseur, je suis un homme de chantier, bien plus qu'un théoricien, et c'est peut-être la raison pour laquelle je suis convaincu qu'il n'y a que l'oeuvre effectivement construite qui puisse satisfaire aux attente de la société. Chaque fois que le projet réussit à dépasser le stade de la gestation, il s'enrichit au contact de la réalité.

The architect aspires to build in a city as the artist aspires to exhibit his works in a museum.

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.

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.

I wanted to design a museum in which everything would seem clear.

It was very useful to learn the history, the theory, and the art of building from a practical background.

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.

For me, architecture is not just creating a space to protect people but to make them dream as well.

Great architecture of the past was always clear. SFMOMA is still a simple building to understand.