Casa Rotonda Mario Botta - Stabio, Ticino, Switzerland 1980 - 1982 Clients - Liliana and Ovidio Medici Site area - 700 m ² Volume - 1400 m³
Neal Philipsen 2011 form - technique - body - space
Form orm |ôrm| noun 1 the visible shape or confguration o something : • arrangement of parts; shape : the entities underlying physical form. • the body or shape of a person or thing : 2 a particular way in which a thing exists or appears; a manifesta -
tion :
• any of the ways in which a word may be spelled, pronounced, or inected : an adjectival rather than adverbial form. 3 a type or variety of something
“
I imagined a building with a circular plan, cut across its north-south axis by fssure rom which the zenithal light descends. A volume organized on three levels, a sort o tower, or rather, an object designed and cut out itsel “
The Casa Rotonda, or the Round House, by Mario Botta is a building determined by its use as a single amily home, but one which acts largely as an artiact on the southern Swiss landscape. Many aspects o the building can be traced back to Paul Rudolph’s ‘ Six Determinants of Architectural Form’ , including environment, unction, lighting, materials, psychological demands, and spirit o the times, however, with a particular emphasis on psychological demands that both supports the other determinants, and in other ways intentionally neglects them. The psychological demands o space, as dened by Paul Rudolph, is very evident in the orm o the Casa Rotonda and reects many o Mario Bottas’s own philosophies. According to Rudolph, meeting the psychological demands o a space, means manipulating shape and using symbols to create a certain ‘monumentality’ to space. He goes on to say “We must learn anew how to create a place o worship and inspiration” (Rudolph 214). Mario Botta, as evident in the Casa Rotonda, does not think it is a stretch to apply this to the amily home. In Quasi un Diario, Frammenti intorno all’architecttura ( Almost a Diary, Fragments about architecture ) Botta quotes
orm - 1
Ruskin, “I say that i men truly lived as men, their houses would be temples” (Botta 213). The Round House does in act look like a temple, seemingly noncompliant with its traditional unction as a amily home. The acade’s careul attention to geometric pure orms cut rom a perect cylinder, is something sooner associated with worship and contemplation than amily living. However, Botta argues that the two are not mutually exclusive. The home is a space o protection, a place o reection, where it is possible to cultivate the human and psychological resources necessary to take on tomorrow. Botta quotes in Almost a Diary the ot heard sentiment “I’m tired, I’m going home,” (Botta 213) to illustrate home as a reprieve rom lie, not unlike how many view a temple. By choosing with temple-like orm, Botta also makes a very intentional statement in regards to paradigms o orm. He questions the historical shape o residential orm, and subsequently creates a local heterogeneity that challenges the built and natural orm around it. The orm o the Casa Rotonda intentionally subverts the tradition o architecture in the area, a concept reminiscent o the ‘new architecture ’ described by Jefrey Kipnis. One o the key princi-
orm - 2
ples o DeFormation, a term Kipnis uses to describe his new architecture, is an “emphasis on abstract, monolithic architectural orm that broaches minimal direct reerences or resemblances and and that is alien to the dominant architectural modes o a given site” (Kipnis 109). This principle accurately describes the Casa Rotonda’s orm and situation on its site. The tall, three storey cylindrical shape o the building with a triangular cap and bold square cut outs, dees the predominately two storey, rectangular, typical amily homes that enclose the site. The building stands like a medieval-modern tower that overlooks, yet simultaneously turns its back, on the proletarian homes below. In Botta’s own words: “The intention was to avoid any comparison and/ or contrast with the surrounding buildings, but to search instead or a spatial
orm - 3
100ft 50m
100ft 50m
north
north
relationship with the distant landscape and horizon. By using a cylindrical volume I wanted to avoid elevations that would necessarily have to be compared to the acades o the existing houses around it” (Botta, Botta.ch). Although it can be argued that the Casa Rotonda does signicantly invite comparison and contrast to the surrounding buildings, what is perhaps more interesting is Botta’s assertion that the Round House creates a relationship with the landscape. Lighting and views aside, the orm o the building itsel does little to reect the environment and instead searches or orm in abstract geometries. The attention paid to geometry in the Round House is a process steeped in tradition. The philosophy o pure orm and geometry goes as ar back as Plato (Theory o Forms), and has been signicantly observed in architecture theoretically since the late 19th century. In Modern Architecture and Historical Change Alan Colquhoun points out the work o designers in the late 19th century who searched or pure orm and whose work were “characterized by a degree o abstraction, a simplicity and purity o prole, and an absence o detail and ornament” (Colquhoun 195). A similar description can be made or Botta’s Casa Rotonda. Proles o the building are simple and abstract, detailed with immediately recognizable shapes, and generally
500ft 200m
absent o ornament. However, the building cannot be immediately be called modern, in the stylistic sense o the word. The accented symmetry o the building as a circle (in plan), without necessarily having a unctional justication, and the ocus on pure orms, suggests a more post-modern, even neoclassical, take on style. The use o a roman rieze across the top o the cylinder reinorces this subtle eclecticism, as does the triangular top reminiscent o a classical pediment.
north
orm - 4
Works Cited
Jerey Kipnis, “Towards a New Architecture”, in Architectural Design, Mar-Apr 1993. Vol.63, Iss.3-4 Paul Rudolph, “The Six Determinants o Architectural Form,” in C. Jencks and K. Krop, eds., Theories and Maniestoes o Contemporary Architecture, WileyAcademy, 2006. Alan Colquhoun, “Form and Figure,” in Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change, MIT Press, 1981. Mario Botta, “Quasi un Diario, Frammenti intorno all’architecttura” Mario Botta, Botta.ch. Accessed Oct 17 2011.
orm - 5
