BOTTA

The towers of the aerial tramway up to Cardada turned out merely to be our first encounter with the Ticino-born architect Mario Botta. He happens to have also drawn at least two churches, a sports arena, a bus station, a casino, and of course a number of houses and office buildings in the region. One wonders if any of his 'brothers' are working in some of the decision-making bodies?? He is, after all, from the Italian speaking part of Switzerland.

We saw the perhaps most spectacularly located church of his (lower left corner in the picture), when we hiked along the ridge from Mt. Tamaro to Mt. Lema. All the other buildings shown here are in the city of Lugano. We caught a glimpse of the casino from across the Lake Lugano, but that didn't tempt us to take a closer look.

Outside of Ticino his most famous works are probably the the SFMoMa and the cathedral in Évry. And yes, the man is terribly fond of squares, right angles, and red bricks...