Mario Botta's Sketches (2)

Jean Tinguely Museum, Basel, Switzerland

(1993 - 1996)

The museum is dedicated to the work of Jean Tinguely, one of Switzerland's greatest sculptors, who died in 1991. The building has a rectangular plan, and each of its sides responds in a different way to the prevailing urban conditions. Whereas on one side it rises to a solid wall, in an effort to shut out the constant din of motorway traffic, on the other side it embraces the adjacent park area with a series of generously proportioned front naves. As entrance to the park and to the museum, the building provides a space for mediation with the city; it also provides a walkway suspended above the river. The museum becomes a reorganizing influence, dominating and controlling its location. This is how Botta's design process works - through constant attention to the surrounding environment, to the conditions, the history and the morphological demands of the site.

The museum is a wonderfully surprising delight. All four levels are alive with ponderous movement, musical with the clean notes of working machinery. "Works of art usually make their statements silently, " said Mario Botta, the Swiss architect who designed the museum specifically to house the collection. "These works are the exception, for they communicate through sound engendered by their movements." Many of the exhibits in the museum were donated by Tinguely's wife and fellow artist, Niki de Saint Phalle.