During Botta’s four years in Venice both Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn designed important projects for that city. With a combination of single-minded determination and youthful enthusiasm, Botta persuaded both architects to hire him; he worked for Le Corbusier on the Venice hospital during his first year in the city, and for Kahn on the convention center exhibition just after he graduated. Luck, but also a clear sense of direction, led Botta into contact with Le Corbusier, Kahn, and Scarpa. Fittingly, he has built on their tradition.
在博塔在威尼斯的四年时间里，勒·柯布西耶和路易斯·康都为这座城市设计了重要的项目。博塔凭借一心一意的决心和年轻的热情，说服了两位建筑师聘请他；他在威尼斯的第一年为勒·柯布西耶的医院项目工作，毕业后在会议中心的展览上为路易斯康工作。幸运，但也有明确的方向感，使博塔与勒·柯布西耶、路易斯康和斯卡帕接触。恰如其分的是，他继承了他们的传统。
Mario Botta first gained international attention with a remarkable series of houses in Switzerland, modest in budget and scale but of strong monumentality. While clearly modernist, these houses also have ties to the vernacular architecture of Botta’s native canton of Ticino as well as to the classical tradition. Set in a spectacular landscape of hills and lakes on the southern slopes of the Swiss Alps, they evoke a clear sense of place, their bold, archetypal geometric forms often echoing those of the local vernacular. Built of ascetic materials, beautifully crafted, tactile, and sensual, they comprise a rich set of variations on a few basic themes that have begun to define a new modern domestic type which, like its classical precedents, is axially organized and presents a powerful symmetrical image, or figure.
马里奥·博塔第一次获得国际关注是因为在瑞士建造了一系列引人注目的房子，这些房子的预算和规模都不大，但具有很强的纪念性。虽然这些房屋显然是现代风格的，但它们也与博塔故乡提契诺州的乡土建筑以及古典传统有联系。它们坐落在瑞士阿尔卑斯山南坡壮观的山丘和湖泊景观中，给人一种清晰的地方感，它们大胆的原型几何形状经常与当地方言的几何形状相呼应。它们由苦行材料建造，制作精美，有触觉，有感官，包括一些基本主题的丰富变体，这些主题已经开始定义一种新的现代家居类型，就像它的古典先例一样，是轴向组织的，并呈现出强大的对称形象或形象。
But Botta’s modernism is not utopian. It neither pursues a machine aesthetic nor asserts the primacy of function in generating form, although current critiques would so characterize all of modernism. Botta’s modernism is part of a movement away from the technological and functional determinism of the 1920s, which came to be known as the International Style, toward a man-centered modernism that sought fundamentals within a more humanist framework, using as points of departure archaic, primitive, and vernacular sources. The idea was not to copy these sources but to understand their underlying principles of form, construction, and psychology. Paralleling contemporary ethnography, in which primitive peoples were studied in order to get beneath the encrusted layers of”culture”in Western societies to the”purer”states of man, this modernist tradition similarly sought to strip architecture of its layers of style and ornamentation in search of the timeless.
但博塔的现代主义并不是乌托邦的。它既不追求机器美学，也不主张功能在生成形式中的至高无上地位，尽管目前的批评将是所有现代主义的特征。博塔的现代主义是从20世纪20年代的技术和功能决定论(后来被称为国际风格)转向以人为中心的现代主义运动的一部分，这种现代主义在更人文主义的框架内寻求基础，使用古老、原始和方言来源作为出发点。我们的想法不是复制这些来源，而是理解它们的形式、结构和心理的基本原理。与当代民族志类似，这种现代主义传统也试图剥离建筑的层级风格和装饰，以寻找永恒的东西。在当代民族志中，研究原始人的目的是为了深入了解西方社会“文化”的包围层，到人类的“更纯粹”状态。
This move away from International Style functionalism was first apparent in the gradual appropriation and reinterpretation of the Mediterranean vernacular in the 1930s by Le Corbusier, which evolved into his archaizing, beton brut postwar work. Similarly, by 1935 in Scandinavia, Erik Gunnar Asplund and Alva Aalto moved away from the International Style by reintegrating the vernacular and classical into their work.A renewed interest in rooting their architecture to the earth and using natural materials emerged, partly inspired by their discovery of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work of the 1930s. And Louis Kahn, perhaps the most significant architect to emerge in the postwar years, more systematically reintegrated into the modern movement the abstracted form world of the past. While this new architecture took many diverse forms, all of them had in common a shift from a technologically and functionally driven architecture emphasizing discontinuity with the past to an architecture that emphasized the timeless needs of man and sought to reinterpret the past in the context of modern society.
这种对国际风格功能主义的背离首先体现在勒·柯布西耶在20世纪30年代对地中海白话的逐渐挪用和重新解释中，这演变成了他战后粗暴的仿古作品。同样，到1935年，在斯堪的纳维亚半岛，埃里克·根纳·阿斯普朗德和阿尔瓦·阿尔托通过将本土和古典重新融入他们的作品中，摆脱了国际风格。人们重新对他们的建筑扎根大地和使用自然材料产生了兴趣，部分原因是他们发现了弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特20世纪30年代的作品。而路易斯·康，也许是战后出现的最重要的建筑师，更系统地将过去抽象的世界重新融入现代运动。虽然这种新建筑有许多不同的形式，但它们都有一个共同的转变，即从强调与过去不连续的技术和功能驱动的建筑转向强调人的永恒需求并试图在现代社会的背景下重新解释过去的建筑。
A central and fascinating aspect of Botta’s work, and of considerable concern to architecture today, is the question of the continuity and evolution of the moderist tradition. Botta has acknowledged the important influence that Le Corbusier，Louis Kahn, and Carlo Scarpa have had on him. Of the three, Louis Kahn is perhaps the most important influence. Kahn’s Beaux-Arts training schooled him in classical methods of plan composition, and through his teacher Paul Cret, he developed a fundamental belief in a structural rationalism that had roots in nineteenth-century architectural theory, particularly that of Eugene Viollet-le-duc. This interest in structural rationalism, which saw as equally valid the logic of traditional means of construction as well as of modern means such as space frames was combined with an interest in the primary forms of ancient architecture. Ruins, particularly of ancient Roman and Islamic buildings, which had shed everything but the essence of their form, materiality, and structure, provided for Kahn a timeless and rational point of departure for architecture. The interest in ruins was not a megalomaniacal wish for immortality, as in the case of Albert Speer and his patron; rather, as Kenneth Frampton has said, the return to ancient sources”was for Kahn a necessary stand against the historic ‘ void’ of the modern epoch,”
博塔作品的一个中心和引人入胜的方面，也是当今建筑相当关注的一个方面，是现代主义传统的延续和演变的问题。博塔承认了勒·柯布西耶、路易斯·卡恩和卡洛·斯卡帕对他的重要影响。在这三人中，路易斯·康可能是最重要的影响力。康的美术训练使他学会了平面构图的经典方法，通过他的老师保罗·克雷特，他形成了一种结构理性主义的基本信念，这种结构理性主义植根于19世纪的建筑理论，特别是维奥莱·勒·迪克的建筑理论。这种对结构理性主义的兴趣，将传统建筑手段以及空间框架等现代手段的逻辑视为同样有效，并与对古代建筑的基本形式的兴趣相结合。废墟，特别是古罗马和伊斯兰建筑的废墟，除了形式、物质和结构的本质之外，失去了一切，为路易斯康提供了一个永恒和合理的建筑起点。对废墟的兴趣并不像阿尔伯特·斯佩尔和他的赞助人那样，是对不朽的狂热愿望；相反，正如肯尼斯·弗兰普顿所说，回到古代来源对路易斯康来说是反对现代历史上的‘空虚’的必要立场。
The interest in the tectonics of materials, the clear articulation of parts, and the pursuit of primary geometries to create order, hierarchy, and seriality in Botta’s architecture build on the work of Kahn. His use of light to give definition to both exteriors and interiors similarly has connections to Kahn. And Botta’s ability to draw inspiration from the Ticino vernacular owes something to Kahn’s way of seeing the past in terms of essentials.
对材料构造学的兴趣，对部件的清晰表达，以及对基本几何的追求，以在博塔的建筑中创造秩序、等级和系列性，建立在路易斯康的工作基础上。他对光的使用给外部和内部都下了定义，这与路易斯康类似。博塔从提契诺方言中汲取灵感的能力在一定程度上要归功于路易斯康从本质上看待过去的方式。
From his countryman Le Corbusier, Botta learned a sense of the social dimensions of architecture, an understanding of the interrelationship of architecture, as he put it, with social, political, and economic concerns. More particularly, having both a social and formal dimension, Botta’s predilection for the open plan would seem to have derived from Le Corbusier, and on a more exclusively formal level so would Botta’s dynamic method of plan composition. But while Le Corbusier was a master of free form, combining order and freedom, organic and geometric forms in a generally dynamic asymmetrical interplay, Botta tends to compose with primary geometric forms, arranging them into a dynamic relationship along the main axis. This has allowed him to synthesize some of the basics of Kahn’s static geometric plans with the more dynamic compositional methods of Le Corbusier.
博塔从他的同胞勒·柯布西耶那里学到了建筑的社会维度，也就是他所说的对建筑与社会、政治和经济关切的相互关系的理解。更具体地说，博塔对开放式计划的偏爱似乎来自勒·柯布西耶，而且在更纯粹的正式层面上，博塔的动态计划编制方法也是如此，既有社会性的，也有形式的。但是，尽管勒·柯布西耶是自由形式的大师，将秩序和自由、有机形式和几何形式在总体上动态的不对称相互作用中结合在一起，但博塔倾向于与原始几何形式组成，沿着主轴将它们安排成一种动态关系。这使得他能够将卡恩静态几何平面的一些基本原理与勒·柯布西耶更动态的构图方法相结合。
The Le Corbusier influence is apparent in the house at Stabio of 1965-67, built while he was in architecture school, with its splayed exterior stair in a dynamic relationship to the main rectangular mass of the house and the asymmetrical end facade. The most recently completed house, at Morbio Superiore(pages 36-37), with its complex curving composition within the rectilinear building shell creating a strong dynamic tension, echoes Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye.
勒·柯布西耶的影响在斯塔比奥1965-67年建造的房子中显而易见，这座房子是在他就读建筑学校时建造的，其张开的外部楼梯与房子的主要矩形体量和不对称的端面有着动态的关系。最新完工的莫比奥·苏必利奥的房子，其复杂的弯曲结构在直线建筑外壳内创造了强烈的动态张力，呼应了勒·柯布西耶的萨沃耶别墅。
While Carlo Scarpa was not a great conceptualizer of new architecture like Le Corbusier or Kahn, his importance for Botta lies in his emphasis on detail, texture, and materials. Scarpa explored freely this aspect of modernism. While Botta’s preference for ascetic materials and matter-of-fact but carefully conceived detailing in his houses and early buildings is clearly in the spirit of Kahn and Le Corbusier, the more intricate detailing and use of richer materials that have emerged later in his work owe more to Scarpa.
虽然卡洛·斯卡帕不像勒·柯布西耶或康那样是一位伟大的新建筑概念家，但他对博塔的重要性在于他对细节、纹理和材料的强调。斯卡帕自由地探索了现代主义的这一方面。尽管博塔在他的房屋和早期建筑中对苦行材料和实事求是但精心构思的细节的偏好显然符合康和勒·柯布西耶的精神，但在他后来的作品中出现的更复杂的细节和对更丰富材料的使用更多地归功于斯卡帕。
Botta’s ability to synthesize all these influences into an architecture that is clearly and consistently his own as well as his extraordinary sense of materials, craft, and detail give his projects their authority. And two issues of wider importance demonstrate how Botta has evolved beyond these architects. The first issue, Botta’s departure from a strict structural rationalism, relates to Kahn in particular; the second issue, Botta’s introduction of center and figure into his architecture, relates to both Le Corbusier and Kahn as well as to the modernist tradition in general.
博塔将所有这些影响综合到一个明确而始终如一的建筑中的能力，以及他对材料、工艺和细节的非凡感觉，赋予了他的项目权威。两个更重要的问题展示了博塔是如何超越这些建筑师的。第一个问题，博塔背离了严格的结构理性主义，特别是与路易斯康有关；第二个问题，博塔将中心和图形引入他的建筑，既涉及到勒·柯布西耶和路易斯康，也涉及到总体上的现代主义传统。
For Kahn the clear expression of structural logic was of primary concern. There is usually no confusion as to what constitutes bearing walls, what is cladding, or how things are held up. For instance, the cantilevered corners of Kahn’s Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building clearly reveal the reinforced concrete trusses that hold them up. However, in Botta’s work structure is concealed, as in the cantilevered corners of the house at Pregassona，and in the brick-clad stepped facade of the office building in Lugano, which is articulated as thick enough to be read as a bearing wall but does not make explicit how it is held up. The precariousness of the massing is fundamental to the experience of the building.Structural logic is deliberately subverted for perceptual ends.
对路易斯康来说，结构逻辑的清晰表达是首要关注的问题。通常不会混淆什么是承重墙，什么是覆层，或者东西是如何支撑的。例如，路易斯康的理查德医学研究大楼的悬臂角落清楚地显示出支撑它们的钢筋混凝土桁架。然而，在博塔的作品中，结构被隐藏起来，比如普雷加索纳的房子的悬臂角落，以及卢加诺办公楼的砖砌阶梯立面，其厚度足以被解读为承重墙，但没有明确说明它是如何支撑的。体量的不稳定是建筑体验的基础。结构逻辑被故意颠覆，以达到感知的目的。
For Botta contextual concerns take precedence over structural consistency, and it is in this larger conceptual framework of priorities that one must see his break with Kahn. The logic of his wanting to articulate a strong corner and, at the same time，tie the office building into the existing fabric is clear. Infreeing himself from Kahn’s structural rationalism, Botta was able to recognize the demands of the surroundings and the need for a strongly articulated corner as well as entry, the latter particularly being almost always subordinate in Kahn’s architecture.
对于博塔来说，背景问题优先于结构一致性，正是在这个更大的优先事项的概念框架中，人们必须看到他与路易斯康的决裂。他想要突出一个强有力的角落，同时将办公楼与现有的建筑结构捆绑在一起，其逻辑是显而易见的。博塔从路易斯康的结构理性主义中解脱出来，能够认识到周围环境的要求，以及对强有力的转角和入口的需求，特别是后者几乎总是从属于路易斯康的建筑。
Modern architects of the 1920s struggled to break away from historical styles, which they viewed as having been made obsolete by new techniques and materials, and from the formal ordering methods of historical architecture, which they viewed equally as an architectural representation of a moribund social order. For historical architectural paradigms-they substituted new architectural paradigms-universal space, column grids moveable wall planes, and an asymmetrical and non hierarchic order-in what must partly be seen as an architectural effort to create a more egalitarian society. While they succeeded in creating a new architecture, which in its openness and lack of traditional hierarchies may have appeared more egalitarian, it is questionable whether this new architecture had any ameliorating effects on the social order. Where they did succeed, not entirely unwittingly, was in providing a model for a utilitarian way of building and a rationale for it, which was then appropriated and debased by society’s economic forces.
20世纪20年代的现代建筑师努力摆脱历史风格，他们认为这种风格已经被新技术和材料淘汰，并摆脱了历史建筑的正式排序方法，他们同样认为历史建筑是垂死的社会秩序的建筑代表。对于历史建筑范例-它们取代了新的建筑范例–通用空间、柱网、可移动的墙面以及不对称和非等级秩序–这在一定程度上必须被视为创造一个更加平等的社会的建筑努力。虽然他们成功地创造了一种新的建筑，由于它的开放性和缺乏传统的等级制度，它可能看起来更平等主义，但这种新的建筑是否对社会秩序有任何改善作用值得怀疑。他们的成功之处并非完全是无意的，而是为一种功利主义的建设方式提供了一个模式和理论基础，然后这种模式被社会的经济力量所侵占和贬低。
Botta’s generation is struggling to overcome the resultant loss of a sense of center and place that today pervades the architecture and urbanism of the industrial mass democracies. For Le Corbusier, an important priority was to develop an architecture that freed itself from the rigid axiality of the French tradition. Botta has, it would appear, almost by instinct, moved toward reintroducing axiality and a sense of center to a modern architectural tradition that formerly proscribed it. Efforts in the postwar years to reappropriate older paradigms in the context of modern architecture produced some paradoxical and many unconvincing results.Perhaps the most paradoxical was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s reintroduction of classical symmetry into his late work.Because of the dematerialized nature of his glass-and-steel architecture and its undifferentiated grid, as well as his refusal to articulate the vertical dimension of space, space was never contained nor hierarchy expressed, and thus the sense of center was subverted. Other postwar efforts at a modern American monumentality, such as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, were less than convincing.
博塔这一代人正在努力克服由此造成的中心感和地方感的丧失，这种感觉今天弥漫在工业大众民主国家的建筑和城市化中。对于勒·柯布西耶来说，一个重要的优先事项是开发一种从法国传统的僵化的轴心中解放出来的建筑。博塔似乎几乎是出于本能，向以前禁止它的现代建筑传统重新引入了轴心和中心感。战后在现代建筑背景下重新利用旧的范例的努力产生了一些矛盾的和许多不令人信服的结果。也许最矛盾的是路德维希·密斯·范·德罗将古典对称重新引入他的晚期作品。由于他的玻璃钢建筑及其无差别网格的非物质化性质，以及他拒绝表达空间的垂直维度，空间从未被包含，也没有等级制度的表达，因此中心感被颠覆。其他战后在现代美国纪念碑上的努力，比如纽约的林肯表演艺术中心，都没有那么令人信服。
The most convincing efforts at a new monumentality were those of Le Corbusier and Kahn. But although both reintroduced great centralized spaces and variations on axial planning, there remains in their work a strong ambivalence, in the case of Kahn, and a clear shunning, in the case of Le Corbusier, with regard to the articulation of center and figure. While the work of both architects provided powerful images, these forms were usually derived from, and celebrated the monumentalization of, functional elements-whether canopies, ramps, stair towers, or structural and service elements. They were asymmetrically composed in the work of Le Corbusier and usually in series in the work of Kahn.
在新的纪念性表达上，最令人信服的是勒·柯布西耶和路易斯康的努力。但是，尽管两人都重新引入了巨大的集中式空间和轴线规划的变化，但他们的作品中仍然存在着强烈的矛盾心理，在路易斯康的作品中，在中心和图形的表达方面，在勒·柯布西耶的作品中，他们明显回避。虽然两位建筑师的作品都提供了强有力的图像，但这些形式通常来自于功能元素的纪念碑-无论是屋顶、坡道、楼梯塔楼，还是结构和服务元素。它们在勒·柯布西耶的作品中是不对称的，在路易斯康的作品中通常是连续的。
In the work of Le Corbusier important spaces tended toward the periphery of the buildings while the center was occupied by an undifferentiated column grid or circulation area. The examples are numerous. In his monumental assembly building at Chandigarh the assembly chamber has drifted off to the periphery of the interior column-filled space and been turned thirty degrees off the orthogonal, completely subverting a sense of center or procession. Similarly, the courtyard of the monastery of La Tourette is crisscrossed by corridors denying its usual historic role as a central focus.
在勒·柯布西耶的作品中，重要的空间倾向于建筑的外围，而中心则被一个未分化的柱网或流通区占据。例子不胜枚举。在他位于昌迪加尔的纪念性集会建筑中，会议厅漂移到了内部柱子填充的空间的边缘，并偏离了垂直方向30度，完全颠覆了中心感或游行队伍的感觉。同样，拉图雷特修道院的庭院被走廊纵横交错，否认了它通常作为中心焦点的历史角色。
Kahn’s was a serial monumentality, achieved by repeating similar architectural and structural units. His emphasis on structural systems and seriality subverted the sense of hierarchy and figure. Even in his most monumental effort, the parliament building at Dacca, which occupies the central point of an essentially symmetrical axial urban composition, Kahn subverted the perception of clear hierarchy of facade and entry by rotating the complex forty-five degrees and repeating aseries of almost identical architectonic masses around the central assembly hall, giving it a sense of equal weight in all directions.
路易斯康的是一个系列的纪念碑，通过重复相似的建筑和结构单元来实现。他对结构体系和序列性的强调颠覆了层次感和形象感。甚至在他最不朽的努力中，达卡的议会大楼占据了基本上对称的轴向城市构成的中心点，卡恩通过将复杂的建筑旋转45度，并在中央大会堂周围重复一系列几乎相同的建筑体量，颠覆了立面和入口清晰分层的观念，赋予了它在各个方向上的同等重量感。
Kahn’s emphasis on seriality was shared widely in this period especially in the work of architects such as Aldo van Eyck. While he and others were much concerned with creating a sense of place and human scale and, like Kahn, had a strong interest in primitive vernaculars, they focused on a free, picturesque arrangement of repetitive units and continued to take a prohibitive attitude toward axiality, monumentality, and figural articulation.
路易斯康对序列性的强调在这一时期得到了广泛的认同，特别是在范·艾克等建筑师的作品中。虽然他和其他人非常关心创造一种地方感和人性化的尺度，并且像路易斯康一样，对原始方言有着浓厚的兴趣，但他们专注于自由、风景如画的重复单位的排列，并继续对中轴性、纪念性和形象的发音采取禁止的态度。
But the false linkage between centrality, monumentality, and a reactionary social order so prevalent, especially in Europe. until recently is no longer convincing for a generation for whom the loss of place, center, identity, and communality has been much more critical. Equally critical has been the problem of how to find an authentic way to bring back centrality and figure without resorting to historical pastiche. in other words, how to convincingly separate these paradigms from the styles or parodies thereof.
但中心性、纪念性和反动社会秩序之间的虚假联系如此普遍，特别是在欧洲。直到最近，对于位置、中心、身份和社区的丧失对他们来说更加关键的这一代人来说，这已经不再令人信服。同样关键的问题是，如何找到一种可信的方式，在不诉诸历史模仿的情况下恢复中心地位和形象。换句话说，如何令人信服地将这些范例与其风格或戏仿分开。
Lost in the late 1960s debate stirred up by Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi, whose ideaswere best demonstrated by the house for his mother, was that house’s reaffirmation of a strong figural presence. While it wa seen as demonstrating how one establishes an order only tosubvert it to accommodate the realities of the program, its single most far-reaching influence may very well have been th gestalt of its strongly figural front facade, split apart at the center. It broke the unspoken prohibition on articulation of figure as well as the prohibition on direct stylistic quotation, an issue it flirted with. And while the house’s progeny, so to speak, tended in the direction of a literal stylistic revival, its influence was also to have an important effect on Botta, firsttentatively in the house at Manno of 1975, subtly in the house at Ligornetto of 1975-76, and more overtly in the house at Pregassona and the project for a house at Caviano, both of 1979.
在20世纪60年代末由罗伯特·文图里在建筑中的复杂性和矛盾性引发的辩论中，他的思想在房子里为他的母亲展示得最好，那就是房子重申了强烈的象征性存在。虽然它被视为展示了一个人如何建立一个秩序，只是为了适应节目的现实而颠覆它，但它最深远的影响很可能是它强烈具象的正面的格式塔，在中心分裂。它打破了不言而喻的禁止表达人物的规定，以及禁止直接引用文体的规定，这是它轻描淡写的一个问题。虽然可以说，这座房子的后代倾向于字面上的风格复兴，但它的影响也对博塔产生了重要影响，首先是1975年在曼诺的房子，1975年至1976年在利戈内托的房子，更明显地是在普雷加索纳的房子和卡维亚诺的房子项目中，这两个都是1979年的。
The evolution we see in Botta’s architecture from the studied asymmetry and seriality of his early work to the strong articulation of center and figure is not an isolated phenomenon. What remains unique to Botta, however, is that there is an interal consistency and logic to this evolution. He remains true to his modernist vocabulary and achieves a consistency between plan and facade within that context, avoiding pasted-on facade motifs or eclectic poche plans. Inthe process, he has broadened the range of expression of the modernist tradition.
我们在博塔的建筑中看到的演变，从他早期作品的研究的不对称性和系列性，到中心和图形的强烈表达，并不是一个孤立的现象。然而，博塔仍然独一无二的是，这种演变有内在的一致性和逻辑。他仍然忠于他的现代主义词汇，并在那个背景下实现了计划和立面的一致性，避免了粘贴的立面图案或折衷的大杂烩计划。在这个过程中，他拓宽了现代主义传统的表达范围。
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Mario Botta November 20,1986-February 10,1987
Department of Architecture and Design
The Museum of Modern Art
