Mario Botta. Sacro | Profano

The architect Mario Botta retraces some significant steps of his career, exploring the inner questions that pushed him to investigate the spaces of sacred and profane. Two concepts that coexist and raise the doubt from which the architect’s work begins.

Mario Botta’s testimony and some close critics’ and artists’ reflections - Enzo Cucchi, Margherita Guccione, Fulvio Irace, Vittorio Sgarbi and Giuliano Vangi – accompany the narration in its chapters. Here, these concepts in opposition, essential elements of Botta’s work, are explored.

The film was produced for the MAXXI Museum in Rome. There, Botta has imagined an installation composed of heterogeneous and highly expressive materials, ranging from a 1:1 scale pavilion and to a facade prototype, to models, sketches, and photographs of his built projects. The ‘sacred and profane’ theme, that gives the exhibition its title, is interpreted in the broader sense of a sacredness inherent in every architectural gesture. From the purity of the materials to the sensitivity to the context.