Library, Villeurbanne, France, Interior rear elevation
Mario Botta
Swiss, born 1943
1984
A colored-pencil-on-print elevation drawing of Mario Botta’s design for a library in Villeurbanne, showing his effort to give a public building a strong, sculptural identity by pairing a monumental cylindrical core with flanking glassy wings.
The image hits you with a calm symmetry: a warm, horizontally banded drum studded with tightly ordered windows sits between two cool, grid-like glass blocks, the contrast of curves and strict rectilinearity rendered with delicate shading and clear linework.
The drawing captures Botta’s late‑20th‑century insistence on bold geometry and tectonic mass—a counterpoint to anonymous glass towers that helped reintroduce monumentality and material clarity into civic architecture.
Medium
Colored pencil on print
Dimensions
30 3/8 x 46 1/2" (77.2 x 118.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the architect
Accession
227.1987
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
