Mario Botta, contemporary architect, lives in Ticino, a small canton in southern Switzerland, in an extraordi narily beautiful landscape separated by the Alps from the rest of Switzerland. Most of his projects have been built within a few miles of Lugano where Mario Botta works. This area reflects Switzerland's peculiar situation: politically it is Swiss, yet culturally it is Italian. This setting has somehow produced an unusual empathy between the architects practicing here, and has inspired what Mario Botta describes as "a love for one's own habitat, in a constructive tradition which is extremly rigorous and closely fitted to the minimal contitions and demands of living'.
