Roberto Burle Marx Lectures: Landscape As Art And Urbanism

Essential lectures on the art of landscaping from Roberto Burle Marx, described by the New York Times as "the designer most responsible for our utopian impressions of the Brazilian built environment." Roberto Burle Marx (1909–94) remains one of the most important landscape architects in the history of the field, celebrated for his famous curving mosaic walkways at Copacabana Beach in Rio and the beautiful rooftop garden at Banco Safra in São Paulo. His distinctive and widely acclaimed work has been featured and referenced in numerous sources, yet few of Burle Marx’s own words have been published.

This collection of a dozen of Burle Marx’s lectures, most of which have never before been available in English, fills that void. Delivered on international speaking tours, they address topics such as Concepts in Landscape Composition, Gardens and Ecology and The Problem of Garden Lighting. Their publication sheds light on Burle Marx’s distinctive ethic and aesthetic of landscape, as “the real art in living.”

The lectures paint a picture of Burle Marx not just as a gardener, artist and botanist, but as a landscape architect whose ambition was to bring radical change to cities and society.

Along with Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, the master planners of Brasília, Burle Marx is the designer most responsible for our utopian impressions of the Brazilian built environment, with its superstructures of swooping concrete ringed by profuse green expanses.