Switzerland. Canton Ticino. Mogno is a village in Vallemaggia District. Mogno is situated near the top of Val Lavizzara, a valley through which the upper Maggia river flows. Mogno is most noted for its modern marble and granite Church of San Giovanni Battista, designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta. The church was erected between 1994 and 1996 on the site of its 350-year-old predecessor, which was levelled by an avalanche in 1986. The church is named after St John the Baptist. A tourist is pretending to be the priest and jokes with his friends. Mario Botta, born April 1, 1943 is a leading Swiss architect and internationally renowned. Mario Botta is one of the most important representatives of the Ticino School. From the completion of his first family home in Stabio (1965-1967), he demonstrated rigorous brutalism (brutalism is an architectural style that uses pure geometric forms, steel, glass and above all raw concrete) on the Corbusier model. Botta develops in his following constructions his own geometric vocabulary: strict cubes, cylindrical bodies based on a circle-shaped plane, small and large oculi in the walls, openings piercing the building from bottom to top and rectangular stairwells. The general form always remains the determining element to which each particular additional form submits. Precise lighting, mainly coming from above, facades arranged so as to play with the different light sources give, despite the severity of the forms, an impression of elegance and lightness. 7.7.2020 © 2020 Didier Ruef