Why does a human being need a space to meditate and pray? In his career Italian architect Mario Botta often wondered this question. So it is only natural for a documentary dedicated to his work – "Mario Botta: The Space Beyond", directed by Loretta Dalpozzo – to start with this same question.
The documentary is on today at the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF: NY; October 16-20, 2019), at New York's Cinépolis Chelsea. Celebrating its 11th anniversary, the world's largest film festival devoted to architecture and design has got an exciting program this year, and opens with this compact documentary about a "celestial" architect, Mario Botta, known for creating sacred architectures such as churches, mosques and synagogues in various countries all over the world.
The documentary starts with Botta entering a church, walking around and explaining the reason why he decided to focus in his career on creating religious architecture – satisfying a man's need to go beyond what's finished.
The director takes us to the workshop of painter and sculptor Giuliano Vangi working on the interior of the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, in Namyang, South Korea. Designed for 2,000 people, in the Western ecclesiastical tradition, the church is amonumental building located in a valley and soon the action moves there to show us Botta on the construction site, supervising the works to show which are the main challenges an architect may face in such a space.
More churches follow, among them the most striking remains the Church of San Giovanni Battista, in Mogno, Switzerland.
Built in 1996 to replace a church destroyed by an avalanche in 1986, the church has got a cylindrical shape and it is characterised by two colours, black and white, employed to create visually striking stripes and squares, giving a sense of geometrical precision, calmness and peace.
There is also a poetical note in this church: the architect states in the documentary that he created a lighter roof with glass that could act as a sort of screen between the heaven and the earth, showing the clouds, the birds, but also the angels passing by.
The scene then moves first to Tel Aviv to explore the Cymbalista synagogue and Jewish heritage centre, two twin spaces communicating together and symbolising a meeting of the religious and the secular, and then to Venice with a moment of study at the library of the Querini Stampalia Foundation. Botta remembers the time he met in Venice Carlo Scarpa, Le Corbusier, Louis Khan and, after the recollections, the architectural continues with a visit to Yinchuan, China to plan a mosque.
There's shots at a model maker, at Botta's studio (where also his children, who followed his path, work) and at his archive as well, but the documentary is essentially a journey through different locations and sacred spaces and an exploration of architectural dichotomies such as light and shadows, the infinite and the finite.
There is nothing conventional about Botta's sacred spaces: you will never find in them the usual decorative elements, but a series of geometries and patterns – circles, squares, and triangles – form the decorations. At times these buildings look as if they were spaceships just landed on Earth.
Botta sees these projects as challenges to overcome contraditions, but he also states that he prefers designing sacred architectures to more conventional spaces such as offices or banks, as they give him the chance to play with a lot of metaphorical themes and therefore to be extremely creative.
That's a lesson that young people who are studying architecture (and who may not be considering designing sacred spaces) may want to keep in mind. But Botta's modernist constructions, are also very inspiring for other creatives and in particular for jewellery designers: the aerial images of his constructions in this documentary allow you to easily imagine them turned into jewels. So, go and watch this documentary and never, ever underestimate the potential of sacred architectures.
"Mario Botta – The Space Beyond" by Loretta Dalpozzo is on today at the Cinépolis Chelsea, 260 West 23rd Street, New York, as part of the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF). The event is also followed by a Q&A with Botta and with the director of the documentary, Loretta Dalpozzo. The documentary will be screened again on 17th and 19th October 2019.