18 Quotes by Mario Botta

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.