Mario Botta was born in Ticino in 1943, he started work as an architect with Carlo Scarpa, Le Corbusier and Luis Kahn. From his first detached houses in Ticino to the Maison du Livre, de l'Image et du Son di Villeurbanne, right through to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, his architectural language has been defined as "simple, archaic, eternal, made of naked evidence and intense sensations"(F. Chaslin).