House in Massagno

Mario Botta – House in Massagno, Lugano-Switzerland, 1979

“…I believe that if architecture is without these avenues, these ways out, where an architectonic object might serve to revive discussion of its destiny, of the morphology of other areas, in the long run you end up producing nothing more than caricatures, in a sense it begins with this conception of the facade as something which belongs neither to the interior nor the exterior: architecture’s separating off its different parts in this way has always been damaging. I have always learnt from history, from the greats of the past: the greater the synergy, the closer you come to the problems themselves and not a caricature of them….When you construct a block of apartments it’s because you’ve designed the street. When you produce a facade it’s because you’ve designed the square. When you produce a Pavilion it’s because you’ve thought out the park, and so on"
Mario Botta