Zefiro Ceiling Light by Mario Botta for Artemide, 1980s

Born in 1943 in Mendrisio, Switzerland, award-winning architect-designer Mario Botta has built an international reputation for striking postmodern public and private spaces that blend Classical forms with a contemporary sensibility.

Exhibiting a strong interest in design, Botta left school at the age of 15 to become a draftsman and later apprenticed for the architectural studio Carloni & Camenisch in Lugano. After three years, the studio appointed him head designer of the parish house of Genestrerio. Botta eventually left to further his education, attending the Liceo Artistico in Milan and finally the Istituto Universitario di Architettura IUAV in Venice. There he studied under architect-designer Carlo Scarpa and received his professional degree in 1969. During his time in Venice, architectural luminaries Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and Louis Kahn (1901-1974) hired him to work on local projects. These mentors forged a lasting impact on Botta’s career and aesthetic approach.

Around 1970, Botta opened his own practice in Lugano and focused on designing houses and churches. His first solo project—a single-family dwelling in Cadenazzo, Switzerland (1970-1)—features a strong, rectilinear silhouette penetrated by well-composed geometric voids. Botta used pre-industrial materials like brick, stone, and wood, rather than “traditionally” modernist materials like steel and glass.

Other standout projects from Botta’s architectural career include a private house in Viganello, Switzerland (1981); the Cathedral of the Resurrection in Évry, France (1988-1990); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1990-1995); the Church of San Giovanni Battista in Mogno, Switzerland (1992-1996); the Tinguely Museum in Basel (1995-96); the National Bank of Greece in Athens (1998-2001); the Tschuggen Bergoase Spa in Arosa, Switzerland (2007); and the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte, North Carolina (2009-2010).

Botta’s product designs tend to echo the simple, serene geometry found in his buildings. Standouts include the Quinta 605 Chair for Alias (1985), Shogun Parete and Shogun Lamp for Artemide (both 1986), Italian Seconda Chairs for Alias (1982) and Tesi 609 Table for Alias (1985).

Over the course of his illustrious career, Botta has served as a visiting professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and he has been the recipient of numerous design awards, including the Grand Officer Award from then Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in 2006. He is a member of many notable groups, such as the Commissione Federale Svizzera delle Belle Arti, the Bund Deutscher Architekten (BDA), and the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Botta’s designs can be found in permanent collections around the world. Notably, he founded the Academy of Architecture Switzerland in 1996. He is also the author of numerous books and monographs.

Today, Botta continues to design in Lugano.

Legendary Italian lighting manufacturer Artemide was founded in the Milan area in 1959 by engineer-designer Ernesto Gismondi (born in San Remo, 1931) and designer Sergio Mazza (born in Milan, 1931). Notably, the latter designed the company’s first successful product, the Alfa Lamp, a year prior to Artemide’s launch. Both founders went on to contribute designs to Artemide’s ever-evolving lines over the next several decades, alongside spearheading the company’s mission to develop distinctive, architecturally-driven lamps, pendants, and other fixtures in collaboration with major design talents from around the world.

Highlights from Artemide’s vast catalogue include Italian designer Vico Magistretti’s space-age Eclisse Lamp (1967) and German-Italian designer Richard Sapper’s minimal, halogen-lit Tizio Desk Lamp (1972), which has become one of the most popular workspace accessories ever produced. The 1980s saw the launch of the Tolomeo Lamp (1987), designed by Italians Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina, which quickly became an international symbol of the “Made in Italy” style that dominated design tastes at the end of the last century. Today, Artemide continues to commission high-tech, high-concept works—increasingly with a focus on sustainability—from notable international designers, such as Herzog & De Meuron, Naoto Fukasawa, Karim Rashid, and Zaha Hadid, among others. Through the decades, many of Artemide’s lighting designs have been awarded the prestigious Compasso d’Oro, with the company itself receiving a “Career Achievement” award in 1995

For more than 50 years, Artemide’s approach has set the pace for design innovation with well-researched products that often end up in the pages of design history books. Numerous pieces have been acquisitioned into museum collections around the world, from New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica in Milan, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.