To celebrate Mario Botta’s 60th birthday on April 1, here are some gems culled from his comments during our Lugano interview in March 2000. The excerpts are from Churches, HarperCollins, 2001.

To quote you, dear Mario, “architecture lasts more than the life of man. This is the measure of a man’s life and his mark.” You have made your mark on the land and in our hearts. Tanti auguri, and many more years of good health, good friends, and good work. * * *

The first act in making architecture is not to put a stone on top of a stone, but to put a stone on the earth. It’s a way of possessing the earth. It’s a fundamental act, a sacred act.

It impresses me to see an ancient fossil. I bought a spiral-shaped fossil that is millions of years old, which I keep as a sculpture. In a million years the pyramids will probably not be here anymore. That which is man-made is ephemeral. This is our condition, to have brief moments.

The critical reading of the territory is the very first act of architecture. Architecture always transforms its site; it never leaves it neutral. It transforms the existing equilibrium into another equilibrium. This is true not only of my work, but of all architecture, whether profound or banal. If there were a thermometer capable of measuring the quality of architecture, it would be able to measure the transformation that has occurred in the landscape.

Beauty is not a secondary thing; it is a primary thing. When I see the texture of the walls at Mogno, I know it is not secondary, it is not decoration. It is structural. I love this essential aspect of architecture because it is not superfluous, it is necessary. It is like the beauty of a woman without makeup. Beauty is integral to architecture.

I maintain that for every creative person, not only architects, but all artists, their research is the great past. Picasso is the primitive man, Paul Klee is the child in every one of us, Henry Moore is modern but archaic. Paradoxically, with every creation, it is not the future the artist is thinking of, but the past.

I like the dimension of man. I want to see how man moves in the landscape. I try to understand two things: first, how the sun moves in a twenty-four-hour period and second, how the seasons change. There are things I see in the winter that I don’t see in the summer.

Architecture has the power to survive. Its potential for memory exists in its ability to endure. History and memory are fundamental to architecture, not its function.

I use drawing not as a representation, but as an instrument of research. The drawing helps me understand the problem. This is why I don’t work on a computer. The computer is mute. When I make a sketch, it has hope. The sketch is not a representation, but an instrument to understand the problem. Therefore, I often think with the pencil.

People sense value. We need to listen to the people, listen to what they believe in. People know that they are born and that they must die. This mystery of life needs expression.

Rocks pray.

A work well done has its own spirituality. I have never worried about symbolic values. I don’t trust them.

To live is to be capable of orienting oneself. All the great architecture of the past has provided this orientation. I go into a castle and pretty much am capable of knowing where I am. I go into Chartres, and even if the space is not entirely apparent, I have the capability of grasping the whole. This is what makes architecture livable. I would like this communal house that we call the city to have these points of reference to permit people to orient themselves. Without light, there is no space. If we closed these windows, this room would disappear.

There’s a monumental aspect to architecture that I think is a crucial part of architecture. The monumental scale confronts the city and the landscape. It’s a form a resistance to the banalities of the new.

I love architecture. I also love all the things about architecture that I cannot express about it. Architecture is space organized within and by the forces that bring it to the ground. When I make a building, I like to feel that it is bound to the ground. An airplane flies; it has another beauty. But for me, architecture has its roots in the earth. The idea of ornamentation is secondary to this. I like to think that people can feel the nature of my spaces, that they are not distracted by decoration.

At Tamaro, hands became a leitmotif for the metaphoric illustrations of the Madonna: Mary as a boat, as a flowering almond during the confines of winter, as an olive, as a cloud, as the moon, as the sea, as a circle, as the city on the hill, as the sun, as a rose, as a pomegranate rich with gracious seeds, as a column, as a restorative herb for our dry hearts, as a tall pine tree, as the queen’s road, as a fortress, as a lighthouse, as a shadow, as an illustrated book that discovers the wonders of the word. I think the new has to be full of memory.

I would like it if the house of today could once again embody the idea of protection, of a maternal womb that defends and protects, but exists also to enable communication, because man only lives in context with others. The idea of a house brings with it the idea of patriotism because the house is never individual, it always connotes the collective. A church is a rich addition to a city, even for those who don’t go to church.

A church is the place, par excellence, of architecture. It is the communal house, the house of the faithful. When you enter a church, you already are part of what has transpired and will transpire there. The church is a house that puts a believer in a dimension where he or she is the protagonist. The sacred directly lives in the collective. Man becomes a participant in a church, even if he never says anything. A church is impossible without memory, a church is the location of memory.

Architecture, church architecture, describes visually the idea of the sacred, which is a fundamental need of man. There is great mystery in a church. For me it is a great privilege to be confronted with the design of a church, because it shelters the most powerful themes of humanity: birth, marriage, death.

I like proposals but I like the realization of a project a hundred times more. When you are actually making the building, it is the most beautiful time.