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Mario Botta, arguably the most famous living Swiss architect, worked as an assistant to both Le Corbusier and Louis I. Kahn. Some of Kahn’s influence can be seen in his design of the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, his first American commission. Until then, Botta worked exclusively in Switzerland and gained international acclaim for the Capuchin convent in Lugano, the Craft Centre in Balerna and the Administration Building for the Staatsbank in Fribourg.

Essentially modernist in approach (with PostModern elements), Botta’s buildings are often based on simple geometric forms, such as the cylinder and the cube, while respecting topographical conditions and regional sensibilities. He is more concerned with interacting with nature and the landscape rather than technology and mechanization. Botta states that "Every architectural work has its own environment...The first action involved in doing architecture is the consideration of its territory".

Santa Maria degli Angeli Chapel, Monte Tamaro, Switzerland, 1992-96
This stone and concrete fortress-like structure lies atop a mountain, 1600 meters above sea level, near the town of Lugano in southern Switzerland, and is accessible by cable car. Local tycoon and owner of the Monte Tamaro cableway, Egidio Cattaneo, commissioned the chapel as a tribute to his late wife, allowing Botta to choose a location from the entire mountain. Botta collaborated with artist Enzo Cucchi, who painted the beautiful frescos inside, one of which is 70 meters long, to create this renowned masterpiece. Villi Hermann, who directed a film on this project, cites the “affinities between the primitivism of Cucchi’s paintings and Botta’s architecture” as integral to the project’s success. “Enzo Cucchi, one of the Italian ‘Transavanguardia’, refused to accept the direction painting was taking in Italy in the Seventies. At the same time, Mario Botta was also moving towards a form of architecture that differed completely from traditional tendencies. In the Eighties these two artists met in Zurich and decided to create something together. Ten years later their dream became reality in the southern Swiss Canton Ticino, 20 kilometres from Lugano on the Mount Tamaro, 1600 metres above sea level… Botta's chapel brings to mind the solidity of a mountain refuge, whilst Cucchi's frescoes depict his visions of the South, of the sea: the mountains and the sea finally brought together. “

The structure consists of three elements: a cylindrical volume, a viaduct walkway and a smaller, stepped bridge. The steps form the ceiling of the chapel, located directly below.

“This project consists of a cylindrical volume, a long bridge and a smaller stepped bridge that flies over the chapel entrance and runs perpendicular to the main axis. These three elements are interconnected in a fairly straightforward way under strict rules of symmetry. The project of the chapel is labyrinthine; it is an infinite path for meditation and thought. There are different readings to these routes of circulation, from the most evident following the long bridge from the ground up to the edge of the cliff and the unlimited view from the roof of the chapel, to others more circular and obscure.

The first path takes the visitor to a small balcony with a cross that stands against the infinitude (an encounter with the universe perhaps). Then, the visitor would turn around and reach the lower level, descending by the staggered roof of the chapel and onto the second smaller bridge to finally end up at the reflecting glass door of the cylinder (an encounter with himself). Walking into the small chapel the visitor will find an intimate space of black cement-plastered walls and a soft indirect light penetrating through low windows which point downwards towards the valley; natural light also comes in via the indented tier system of the roof. A linear gap ending up in a square and filled with water (another Botta icon) guides the visitor towards the altar. Behind it there is a blue fresco of two hands by Enzo Cucchi which turns white as it fuses with light (an encounter with God).

Enzo Cucchi's most striking work is however the depiction of two cypresses running along the vaulted axis from underneath the entrance of the bridge by the side of the hill all the way into the chapel. To view this work it is necessary to take another route from underneath the main bridge in an elevated tunnel with circular windows. There is a sense of timelessness given the function of the building, its location and the almost primitive quality of the porphyre stone of which the project is made. The building like the rest of Botta's work is bound to its geometry and proportions.” From the informative www.galinsky.com website.

To Visit:
Take the Cable Car from Rivera. The last lift is at 4 p.m.
By car: Take the A2 motorway and exit at Rivera-Monte Ceneri where you will find the cable car parking lot.
By train: Take a local train from Bellinzona or Lugano and get off at the Rivera-Bironico station. The cable care is within walking distance.

More details available at www.montetamaro.ch

Read another article on Mario Botta and his work.