Studio Week 8

Last week we completed our precedent studies in our groups and had our first encounters with the plotter. We were assigned to plot a 36x48 paper with a variety of diagrams, plans, and sections to communicate our house and the way it is used and inhabited. Part of the assignment was to write a biography of the architect, Mario Botta, which I added below.

Precedent Study: La Casa Rotonda, Mario Botta

Mario Botta is a Swish architect that gained worldwide attention for his expressive, unconventional architectural designs. Botta’s designs amazed visitors from all over through geometric forms and heavy materials. He graduated from IUAV and started his career in Le Corbusier's office. Botta then slowly developed relationships with a high-profile network of designers including Oscar Niemeyer, Alberto Giacometti,Louis Khan, and Carlo Scarpa, who all would soon influence his design work.

In 1970, Botta opened his own practice and created beautiful architectural works including La Casa Rotonda. In 1980, architect Mario Botta was hired by Liliana and Ovidio Medici to design a home in Stabio, Ticino, Switzerland. Originally situated in a rather slowly developing valley town, Casa Rotonda’s position was designed to allow for the building to strike onlookers as significant and purposeful. The home was completed in 1982 and is organized on four floors with a basement floor completely underground. The home has a circular plan with a diameter of about 12 meters. The interior spaces are deployed around a north south axis while the ground floor is the entrance floor and includes an east entrance garage. The first floor offers a living room, dining room, and kitchen, and the second floor offers two bedrooms with a corresponding restroom and a master suite. The construction of the home is based on double walls in cement blocks: 12 cm external, 8 cm thermal, and 15 cm internal. The walls below ground level are all in reinforced concrete, gray on the outside and white on the inside. All windows and window frames are made of iron painted black and the floors are laid in Old English oak strips.

La Casa Rotonda is a clear example of Mario Botta's thought process. The symmetrical use of geometry makes a powerful statement of how extruding shapes into a third dimension creates an abstract reflection.

Review Time!!

1/2"=1' scale Detail Model

Ultimately I consider what we accomplished as a group a success. During the review we were advised to condense the number of individual diagrams, for example our organizational strategy and movement and progression diagram into one, and to clarify some things about our hierarchy diagrams. We were also advised to rethink the layout of our page, specifically the placement of the site diagram, to move it from the middle of the page to maybe a corner or include it with one of the plans to help with the composition of the paper.