cover image Mario Botta: The Complete Works

Mario Botta: The Complete Works

Emilio Pizzi. Artemis, $74.95 (2pp) ISBN 978-1-874056-60-7

Italian architect Mario Botta's serene geometric designs combine the architectonic precision of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, the organicism of Frank Lloyd Wright and Romanesque architecture's sense of perpetuity and respect for the spirit of place. Proceeding from a 1961 vernacular stone parish house in Ticino, Switzerland, to an elaborate, unrealized 1985 design for housing on an island in Venice, this systematic survey of Botta's works--villas, schools, churches, banks, cultural centers, etc.--includes more than 600 photos and drawings, as well as a biographical profile. Pizzi, a Milanese professor and architect, charts the development of an empirical thinker with a vein of idealism, who has restored the arch and the column to a noble position in the repertoire of modern architecture. (Aug.)