Mid-Century White and Crystal Murano Glass Reticello Light by Mario Botta for Venini, 1970s

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.

Venini—the world famous Italian glass company—traces it roots to 1921, when Paolo Venini (1895-1959), a Milan lawyer with glassmaking ancestors, and Giacomo Cappellin (1887-1968), a Venetian antiques dealer, launched the Cappellin Venini & C. glass factory on the island of Murano. Under the art direction of Vittorio Zecchin, Cappellin and Venini’s business produced high quality, Renaissance-style goblets, pitchers, and vases.

In 1925, following a dispute with Zecchin, Cappellin and Venini split their business in two. Venini’s business took the name Vetri Soffiati Muranesi Venini & C., along with a new, visionary art director, Napoleone Martinuzzi. Venini soon became synonymous with flamboyantly hued art glass and glass lighting at the cutting edge of contemporary aesthetics.

From 1927 to 1932, Venini explored a series of new, techniques—like pasta vitrea (opaque glass), vetro incamiciato (layered glass), and vetro pulegoso (bubble glass)—which engendered particularly experimental forms for the time. Venini’s reputation for innovation grew through exhibitions at national fairs, like the Venice Biennale, Monza, and eventually the Triennale di Milano. Around this time, Venini went into to partnership with Gio Ponti, Pietro Chiesa, Emilio Lancia, Michele Marelli, Tomaso Buzzi, and Carlo Visconti di Modrone to form Il Labirinto, an association for the promotion of modern design.

In 1932, Martinuzzi decided to dedicate himself to sculpture, and Venini’s artistic directorship went to architects Tomaso Buzzi and Carlo Scarpa. The modernist vision they brought to Venini represented an exciting, modernist turn for the company. Scarpa was particularly interested in capturing and amplifying light’s interaction with glass and was instrumental in developing new techniques like battuto (beaten glass), tessuto (glass with lines), granulare (glass with small globules), and murina (patterned glass made from rods).

Following World War II, Venini continued to produce glass in a modern idiom, frequently in collaboration with important midcentury designers and architects—not only Carlo Scarpa and Gio Ponti, but also BBPR,Fulvio Bianconi, Roberto Menghi, Tobia Scarpa, Massimo Vignelli, and Tapio Wirkkala.

When Paolo Venini passed away in 1959, his company passed to his son-in-law, Ludovico Diaz De Santillan. In the 1970s, Ludovico’s daughter, Laura, managed the company, until the Gardini and Ferruzzi families acquired it in the mid-1980s. Through the end of the 20th century, Venini continued to work with outstanding design talents, including Gae Aulenti,Mario Bellini, Alessandro Mendini, Timo Sarpaneva, and Ettore Sottsass.

In 2001, Venini was acquired by Italian Luxury Industries. In the 21^st century, the company has commissioned designs from the likes of Tadao Ando, Atelier Biagetti, Atelier Oï, Barber Osgerby, the Bouroullec brothers, the Campana brothers, Gaetano Pesce, Matteo Thun, and Studio Job. In 2011, Venini celebrated its 90^th anniversary with a travelling exhibition that visited the Glass Museum of Murano, Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice, the Shanghai Museum of Glass, and the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in Milan. The first exhibition dedicated to the glass produced by Carlo Scarpa for Venini was a critical and popular success in 2013-14 when it showed at Le Stanze del Vetro in Venice and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Venini glass can be found in the permanent collections of the Louvre, V&A, MoMA, and more.

* Images courtesy of Venini