Church of st joh the baptist,
Mogno, Maggia valley ,
Switzerland
Project
1986/92
Construction
1992-1998
Location
Mogno-Fusio,
Maggia
Valley
, TI,
Switzerland
Commissioned by
Mogno
Church
Reconstruction Association
Architect
Mario Botta, Lugano
Site Supervision
Giovan Luigi Dazio
Materials
double-skinned stone block wall made of alternating courses of Riveo granite and white Peccia marble, glazed roof supported by a metallic structure, frames in black iron. Floors: Riveo granite and Peccia marble slabs
Photographs
Pino Musi, Enrico Cano
This project was inspired by the condition of deep devastation of its immediate context - a highly unusual situation produced by a natural disaster: in 1986 a snow avalanche had destroyed half of the local village, as well as the 17th century church. The approach to this project was therefore somewhat unusual and was the fruit of a meditation upon the relationship between the building, as an expression of man's daily labor and his very presence on the land, and the boundless power of nature. The subtle play between the massiveness of the stone wall and the lightness of the glass roof is a testimony to the survival of the building, which is designed as a bulwark for the village, in defiance of the mountain. The thick lower mass of the stone wall reflects the nature of the construction as a whole, and is skillfully lightened by the gradual tapering of the courses towards the top. The interior plan consists of a rectangle inscribed within an external ellipse that ultimately changes into a circle at roof level Botta thus orientates the church space by means of the minor axis of the ellipse, which becomes a circle at the conveniently sloped roof. The powerful structure of the two buttresses, which tie the lower and upper walls together, emphasizes the strength of resistance required in a building designed to cope with the brutal forces of nature. The construction method, marked by the striped, two-color façades, stresses the classic stratification of the stone building and underlines the attention to gravity involved in this technique[...].
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