Casa Rotonda (House of Medici) in Stabio, Ticino
Mario Botta in his book "La casa rotonda": Writing about architecture, reviewing and arranging the motifs for printing requires a reversed approach compared to what I am usually accustomed to. To speak about architecture or a building truly means to break down the individual phases of the design process from which the work was constructed. To create architecture, on the other hand, means to build a design in phases. I am quite perplexed when I see the images compiled here from the construction of the round house; this probably stems precisely from that reversal. A single-family house on the edge of the village: The situation is dictated by the building regulations; the village's development plan around the old centre; the structure of the footpaths that become roads; the pattern of the fields and vineyards designated as building plots. In this context, I was asked to build a single-family house on a small plot at the northern tip of a new residential area. I conceived a building with a circular floor plan and placed a shaft along the north-south axis through which light enters from above. A building volume on three levels, a kind of tower, or rather an object carved from itself. The intention was to avoid any comparison with the neighbourhood, and indeed any contrast with it; instead, to establish a spatial connection to the distant landscape and the horizon. With the circular form, I sought to avoid surfaces that would necessarily have to be compared with the facades of the surrounding houses. A house so clearly defined derives its legitimacy from the space between the land surrounding its base and the sky above the skylight. Around this space, I conceived the manifold functions of life: the ground floor as a passageway between inside and outside; the first floor for the various activities of the day; the top floor more private and for sleeping.
