October is National Architecture Month, also known in some circles as Archtober. To commemorate the month, I am going to post a brief post every day of the month.
There is no architect I can think of that better exploits the quality of solidity in architecture than Mario Botta. Mario Botta’s architecture is all about solidity. Below is a house he design. It is almost literally a solid block of a building. The transparency of the windows, set deep into the building, only makes the house look more solid. This sense of solidity makes for a heightened feeling of security when you are inside.
For San Francisco Bay Area folks, you can actually visit a building by Mario Botta. He is the architect for the original Museum of Modern Art, seen below with the awful new addition. Botta’s building was a minor master piece of modern rationalist architecture. The interior has largely been destroyed, but the exterior remains.
The solidity that is visible in the house, is also visible in the museum building. In the museum, there are slices into the building apparent where the building steps back and at the entry. These slots in the bulk of the building accentuate that sense of solidity.
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