原文：Published on the occasion of the exhibition Mario Botta /The Museum of Modern Art/November 20,1986-February 10,1987
翻译：匡私衡
你曾公开表示你受到了勒·柯布西耶、路易斯·康以及卡洛·斯卡帕的影响。你能总结一下你从他们身上学到的东西吗？
勒·柯布西耶、路易斯·康和斯卡帕是我这一代人的参照点。我有幸与这些大师有过许多直接的经历，并深受他们的影响。我相信，我们创造建筑的方式，我们对新问题的回应，植根于我们之前的建筑文化所形成的历史遗产。在建筑中，就像在艺术中一样，人们不能谈论进步。我们只是在不断地尝试为新的问题提供新答案。
在我这一代人中，没有哪位建筑师不受柯布西耶所影响。柯布西耶的一些设想，当然可以，也应该被重新审视，但无论如何，忽略它们是不可能的。就像一位20世纪的画家无法忽视保罗·克利的作品。柯布西耶代表了新建筑的希望。最令人着迷和惊讶的是他将各种需求、愿景和思想转化为建筑术语的能力。任何政治、社会或经济方面的思考，柯布西耶都能以某种方式转化为建筑。这也许是他留给给我们最伟大遗产。
路易斯·康给我印象最深的是他寻找问题根源的能力。他就像一个救世主似的，关注着人类最原初的需求。对于康来说，建筑首要的任务是满足精神的需求和欲望，而不是肉体的需求和欲望。
对于斯卡帕来说，最重要的是他表达材料的能力和敏感度；他能够彻底地读懂材料，以穷尽材料表达的可能性。还有一种很大的乐趣，就是他能够从精细的东西中所得到的乐趣。
至于他们对我有什么共同的启发，我肯定会说他们都充满了诗意，以及对人类所存有的一种不可名状的希望。
你觉得你的关注的问题与柯布西耶和康这一代人关注的问题，他们之间的本质区别是什么？
我这一代人与上一代人的不同之处在于，我们能够更好地理解技术增长的极限。我们能够更好地评估这种增长所固有的危险，我们不能再自欺欺人地认为环境、能源稀缺、污染等问题会自行解决。
对于康来说，逻辑清晰的结构是他设计中放在首要的位置；在你的设计中，结构系统和结构逻辑似乎并没有那么重要。你首先考虑是什么？
对于康来说，结构问题是非常重要的，我同意这点。在我的设计中，我不认为结构是一个决定性因素。在我看来，项目中最重要的因素是对特定条件做出回应。很多时候，我实际上把结构从属于这个主要的因素，这是对话的需要，需要与环境进行对话。例如，位于卢加诺的建筑中，对特定情况做出反应——即建筑前面对角线的正方形——打破了静态结构。在某种意义上，建筑的体量响应了两种截然不同的条件：一是希望强调角部本身作为一个强有力的参照点，二是希望与现有的城市结构建立联系。
我认为，今天的建筑需要形象，需要情感；需要建筑再次与人对话，需要再次成为“存在”，需要成为物质，需要重新获得有时可能是情欲的意义；建筑需要重新建立与人的关系，几十年来，在国际风挖掘了一切交流的可能性之后，建筑是如此精致、有距离感。从这个意义上说，我工作的条件与康截然不同，对他来说，结构有自主性，有自己的重要性。我还可以补充一点，对我来说，建筑物能够具有的最深刻的意义在于它能够与其环境建立的关系，而不是建筑物本身。它确定的空间关系比其本身更重要。
You have acknowledged your debt to Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and Carlo Scarpa. Would you summarize what you see as the important lessons you have drawn from each of them?
Le Corbusier, Kahn, and Scarpa are points of reference for my entire generation. I’ve had the good fortune of having had a number of direct experiences with these masters, and my own formation has been influenced by them. I believe that our manner of making architecture, our sensitivity to new problems, is grounded in the historical legacy established by the architectural culture that preceded us. In architecture, as in art, one cannot speak of progress. There is only continuity in the attempt to provide new answers for new situations.
There are no architects of my generation who do not owe something to Le Corbusier. Some of Le Corbusier’s hypotheses certainly could and should be reexamined critically, but in any case it is impossible not to take them into account. It would be like a twentieth-century painter ignoring the work of Paul Klee. Le Corbusier personified the hopes of the new architecture. What I find most fascinating and astonishing about him is his ability to translate every kind of need, hope, and thought into architectural terms. There was no political, social, or economic consideration that Le Corbusier could not in some way transform into architecture. This, perhaps, is the great lesson he has taught us.
What impressed me most about Kahn was his ability to get to the roots of problems. He had an almost messianic predisposition to focus on man’s primary needs. The edifice was always, for Kahn, a space in which to satisfy the needs and aspirations of the mind before those of the body.
As for Scarpa, what is most important was his capability and sensitivity in giving expression to materials; his ability to read into the very structure of material in order to draw the greatest possible expression from it. Then there’s also the great pleasure, the joy he derived merely from something well made.
As for what concerns I share with them, I would definitely have to say poetry is among them, as well as a hope in man beyond all reason.
What would you characterize as the essential differences between your concerns and those of Le Corbusier and Kahn in their generation?
The difference between my generation and the preceding ones is that we are better able to understand the limits of technological growth. We are better able to evaluate the dangers inherent in this growth and we can no longer delude ourselves that such problems as environmental balance, scarcity of energy resources, pollution, and so on, will take care of themselves.
For Kahn, a logically articulated structural system was an important priority in his work; in your work, structural systems and structural logic do not appear to be of equal importance. What are your priorities?
I agree that in Kahn the question of structure is very important. In my work, I don’t think structure is quite as much a determining factor. In my case, the most important factor in the elaboration of a project is the desire to respond to a particular context. Often I actually subordinate structure to this primary concern, which is a need for dialogue, for discourse with the context. For example, in my comer building in Lugano, the desire to respond to a specific situation —that is, the square diagonally in front of the building — made me break up the static stmcture. In a sense, the building, in its volume, responds to two distinct conditions: the desire to emphasize the comer itself as a strong reference point, and the desire to establish a connection with the existing urban fabric.
I believe that today there is a need for images, for emotion in architecture; a need for architecture to speak once again to people, to become “presence” once again, to become material, to reacquire a meaning that can sometimes be erotic; a need to reestablish a partnership with people, after decades in which architecture was so antiseptic, distant, after the International Style mined all possibility of communication. In this sense, the conditions for my work are quite different from what they were for Kahn, for whom stmcture had an autonomy, an importance of its own. I might also add that for me the deepest significance that an architectural object can have lies more in the relationship that it is able to establish with its context than in the object itself. The spatial relationships that it determines are more important than the object itself.
