At age fifteen, Botta dropped out of secondary school and apprenticed with the architectural firm of Carloni and Camenisch in Lugano.

His designs tend to include a strong sense of geometry, often being based on very simple shapes, yet creating unique volumes of space.

[citation needed] His trademark style can be seen widely in Switzerland, particularly the Ticino region and also in the Mediatheque in Villeurbanne (1988), a cathedral in Évry (1995), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art or SFMOMA (1994).

Religious works by Botta, including the Cymbalista Synagogue and Jewish Heritage Center were shown in London at the Royal Institute of British Architects in an exhibition entitled, Architetture del Sacro: Prayers in Stone.

Man becomes a participant in a church, even if he never says anything.”[4] In 1998, he designed the new bus station for Vimercate (near Milan), a red brick building linked to many facilities, underlining the city's recent development.

[8] One of Botta's less-known works is the NBG Insurance Headquarters complex in Athens, Greece, completed in 2006, which represents a collaboration with Rena Sakellaridou and Morfo Papanikolaou of SPARCH architecture.

The office complex features two solid forms arranged around a public square, facilitating views of the nearby Acropolis, and an atrium filled with glass skywalks.

The project, which lies substantially underground so as to minimize the impact on the urban fabric, emphasizes movement and light by transforming masses into voids.