Ticino: People
Interesting people from Ticino
Mario Botta
Mario Botta was born in Mendrisio on 1 April 1943. He is a Swiss architect of international renown. While still a student, he worked in Le Corbusier's studio. In 1970 he opened his own agency in Lugano. His architecture typically works with light, using simplified architectural shapes. Elementary geometric shapes are characteristic of his œuvre. One of Botta's most famous works is the round house in Stabio, built in 1982.
Flavio Cotti
Flavio Cotti was born in Muralto on 18 October 1939. He is a politican, and served as a Federal Councillor from 1987 - 1998, as a member of the Christian Democrat Party. He became President of Switzerland in 1991, the seventh centenary of the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy, and in 1998, the 150th anniversary of the federal state. He left the Federal Council on 30 April 1999.
Carla del Ponte
Carla del Ponte was born in Lugano on 9 February 1947. A Swiss judge, she served as an examining magistrate in Lugano, then as Cantonal Prosecutor for Ticino. She became Swiss Federal Prosecutor in 1994. In 1999 she was appointed Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Thus she took over from Louise Arbour in prosecuting presumed perpetrators of the most serious human rights violations. She has been Swiss Ambassador to Argentina since 2008.
Clay Regazzoni
Clay Regazzoni, (Gianclaudio Giuseppe Regazzoni), born in Mendrisio on 5 September 1939; died in Italy on 15 December 2006. He was a Swiss racing driver who epitomized Formula 1 in the 1970s. He took part in 139 Grand Prix races and won five of them, four for Scuderia Ferrari, for which he came second in the Drivers' Championship in 1974. In 1979 he also gave the Williams team its first success, at the British Grand Prix. His career ended in 1980 after an F1 accident which left him paraplegic.
