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MARIO BOTTA: STONE AS THE CUSTODIAN OF OUR EUROPEAN CULTURE
The famous architect explains his passion for stone material
Mario Botta is one of the most famous contemporary architects. Profoundly European by culture and professional training (he was a student of Carlo Scarpa in Venice), he has always designed buildings having strong bonds with the surrounding environment. His style is characterised by frequent use of brick and stone.
We met him to find out his opinion about the current use of natural stone in constructions.
What is the meaning today of using stone in architectural design and in general in designing new buildings?
There is a need for stone materials because they embrace the prestige of a great tradition and memory - but especially because they are so durable. Inasmuch, from this point of view, they paradoxically become very modern materials. In contrast to consumer society, building becomes something that withstands use and resists time to offer testimony going beyond the life of the architect as a document of our epoch and our sensitivity for future generations.
Even today, stone has qualities that perfectly respond to aspects such as durability, resistance to wear, tear, bad weather and ageing and inasmuch, from this point of view, is an extremely "up-to-date" material for architecture and the building industry.
In recent decades architects and designers seem to have preferred using materials such as glass and steel, almost as if stone were something old-fashioned. How can stone be brought to their attention again? Is it perhaps a question of culture?
It is especially a question of culture. Architectural culture has somewhat come to embody this "consumer" philosophy of ephemeral architecture. If we want to be a little more critical, this is the ideology of American society and cities, on the one hand, and Asian on the other. Personally, on the other hand, I believe that European cities have their own values - and the antibodies to withstand the trivialisation and flatness of modern culture, so that stone becomes an important choice from this point of view. We must decide whether architecture and spaces in cities can continue to help us consolidate a tradition that provides the antibodies needed to withstand the trivial new or if we want to demolish European cities and settle for the agglomeration that characterises American and, especially Asian cities. The culture of the independent architectural object is suicidal because it denies the spatial relationships that are offered, on the other hand, by social aspects in cities - such as roads, squares and avenues - which are actually the true values in our life style.
Stone imagined as something old: it is a training problem that also involves universities.
You are right, there are many preconceptions: it is as if to say that Henry Moore is old-fashioned because he used stone for his sculptures. It is meaningless!! Material is an instrument capable of stimulating emotive possibilities and so it all depends on how it is used. Picasso's sculptures are as contemporary and modern as those of Michelangelo in his time. It is also true to say that many young architects do not understand the material. Perhaps we should be more humble when using it. We have to understand its force of gravity. We must understand it applications and processing, something that emerges slowly through craftsman knowledge that is now disappearing. It is much easier to assemble prefabricated elements.
The truth is that architecture is often a ruthless mirror of history. Architecture reflects our conditions and even our hopes. If we continue copying Asian models, those shocking models of today whereby buildings are objects for their own sake equally suitable for Dubai or Milan, I don't know if we are doing our identity much of a service.
Verona, 20 / 5 / 2010
