Roberto Burle Marx
Encyclopedia
Roberto Burle Marx was a Brazil
ian landscape architect
(as well as a painter
, print maker
, ecologist, naturalist
, artist
and musician
) whose designs of park
s and garden
s made him world famous. He is accredited with having introduced modernist landscape architecture
to Brazil. He was known as a modern nature artist and a public urban
space designer.
in Germany
. His mother was raised from an upper class
family in Brazil. Burle Marx's first landscaping inspirations came while studying painting in Germany, where he often visited the Botanical Garden in Berlin
and first learned about Brazil's native flora. Upon returning to Brazil in 1930, he began collecting plants in and around his home. He went to school at the National School of Fine Arts in Rio in 1930 where he focused on visual arts under Leo Putz and Candido Portinari
. While in school he associated with several of Brazil’s future leaders in architecture and botanists who continued to be of significant influence in his personal and professional life. One of these was his professor, Brazilian Modernism’s Lucio Costa
, the architect and planner who lived down the street from Burle. In 1932, Burle Marx designed his first landscape for a private residence by the architects Lucio Costa
and Gregori Warchavchik
. This project, the Schwartz house was the beginning of a collaboration with Costa which was enriched later by Oscar Niemeyer
who designed the Brazilian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. Niemeyer also designed the Pampulha complex in 1942 which Marx designed gardens for.
In 1949 he acquired the 365,000m² estate Barra de Guaratiba
(just outside of Rio de Janeiro). Burle Marx began taking expeditions into the Brazilian rain forest with botanists, landscape architects, architects and other researchers to gather plant specimens. He learned to practice studying plants in situ from the botanist Henrique Lahmeyer de Mello Barreto and established his garden, nursery and tropical plant collection at Guaratiba. This property was donated to the Brazilian government in 1985 and became a national monument. Now called Sítio Roberto Burle Marx, under the direction of IPHAN-Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional / Ministério da Cultura, it houses over 3,500 species of plants. The house was rebuilt in a valley on the site of a garden house
belonging to the original plantation
estate.
Roberto Burle Marx founded a landscape studio in 1955 and in the same year he founded a landscape company, called Burle Marx & Cia. Ltda.
Much of his work has a sense of timelessnes and perfection. His aesthetics were often nature based, for example, never mixing flower colours, utilisation of big groups of the same specimen, using native plants and making a rocky field into a relaxing garden. He was very interested in each plant's character and what effect that has on the whole garden. He opened an office in Caracas, Venezuela in 1956 and started working with architects Jose Tabacow and Haruyoshi Ono in 1968. Marx worked on commissions thorough out Brazil, Argentina, in Chile and many other South American countries, France, South Africa, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. Additionally his artwork can be found displayed throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro “it is an open-air museum of works displaying his unmistakable style, one wholly his own” (Montero 2001 p. 29). Roberto Burle Marx’s 62 year career ended when he died June 4, 1994 two months before his 85th birthday.
He spent a lot of time in the Brazilian forests where he was able to study and explore. This enabled him to add significantly to the botanical
sciences, by discovering new rocks and plants for example. At least 30 plants bear his name. Marx was also involved in efforts to protect and conserve the rain forest from the destructive commercial activities of deforestation for bananas and other crops and clear cutting of timber.
Marx’s work “can be summarized in four general design concepts—the use of native tropical vegetation as a structural element of design, the rupture of symmetrical patterns in the conception of open spaces, the colorful treatment of pavements, and the use of free forms in water features” (Vaccarino 2000, p. 17). This approach is exemplified by the Copacabana Beach promenade, where native sea breeze resistant trees and palms appear in groupings along Avenida Atlantica. These groupings punctuate Portugese stone mosaics which form a giant abstract painting where no section along the promenade is the same. This “painting” is viewed from the balconies of hotels, and offers an ever changing view for those driving along the beach. The mosaics continue the entire two and a half mile distance of the beach. The water feature, in this case, is of course the ocean and beach, which is bordered by a 30 foot wide continuous scallop patterned mosaic walk (Eliovson 1991; Montero 2001). Copacabana Beach is “the most famous in Brazil” (Eliovson 1991 p. 103).
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian landscape architect
Landscape architect
A landscape architect is a person involved in the planning, design and sometimes direction of a landscape, garden, or distinct space. The professional practice is known as landscape architecture....
(as well as a painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, print maker
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
, ecologist, naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
, artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
) whose designs of park
Park
A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...
s and garden
Garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...
s made him world famous. He is accredited with having introduced modernist landscape architecture
Landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve environmental, socio-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions...
to Brazil. He was known as a modern nature artist and a public urban
Urban area
An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
space designer.
Life
Roberto Burle Marx's father was an emigrant from the city TrierTrier
Trier, historically called in English Treves is a city in Germany on the banks of the Moselle. It is the oldest city in Germany, founded in or before 16 BC....
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. His mother was raised from an upper class
Upper class
In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...
family in Brazil. Burle Marx's first landscaping inspirations came while studying painting in Germany, where he often visited the Botanical Garden in Berlin
Botanical Garden in Berlin
Botanical Garden in Berlin is considered one of the most important gardens in the world, with area of 43 hectares and around 22,000 different plant species.The garden is located in the Dahlem neighborhood of the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf...
and first learned about Brazil's native flora. Upon returning to Brazil in 1930, he began collecting plants in and around his home. He went to school at the National School of Fine Arts in Rio in 1930 where he focused on visual arts under Leo Putz and Candido Portinari
Cândido Portinari
Candido Portinari was one of the most important Brazilian painters and also a prominent and influential practitioner of the neo-realism style in painting....
. While in school he associated with several of Brazil’s future leaders in architecture and botanists who continued to be of significant influence in his personal and professional life. One of these was his professor, Brazilian Modernism’s Lucio Costa
Lúcio Costa
Lucio Costa was a Brazilian architect and urban planner.-Career:Costa was born in Toulon, France.Educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, England and in Montreux until 1916, he graduated as an architect in 1924 from the School of Fine Art in Rio de Janeiro...
, the architect and planner who lived down the street from Burle. In 1932, Burle Marx designed his first landscape for a private residence by the architects Lucio Costa
Lúcio Costa
Lucio Costa was a Brazilian architect and urban planner.-Career:Costa was born in Toulon, France.Educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, England and in Montreux until 1916, he graduated as an architect in 1924 from the School of Fine Art in Rio de Janeiro...
and Gregori Warchavchik
Gregori Warchavchik
Gregori I. Warchavchik was a Russo-Brazilian architect.He was born at Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire, and died at São Paulo, Brazil. He arrived in Brazil in 1923. Naturalized a Brazilian, he built for himself between 1927 and 1928 what was considered the first modernist residence in the...
. This project, the Schwartz house was the beginning of a collaboration with Costa which was enriched later by Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho is a Brazilian architect specializing in international modern architecture...
who designed the Brazilian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. Niemeyer also designed the Pampulha complex in 1942 which Marx designed gardens for.
In 1949 he acquired the 365,000m² estate Barra de Guaratiba
Guaratiba
Guaratiba is a large neighborhood located in Rio de Janeiro. It has one of the city's smallest population densities.-Sub-neighborhoods:Due to its territorial size is divided in sub-regions or sub-neighborhoods:...
(just outside of Rio de Janeiro). Burle Marx began taking expeditions into the Brazilian rain forest with botanists, landscape architects, architects and other researchers to gather plant specimens. He learned to practice studying plants in situ from the botanist Henrique Lahmeyer de Mello Barreto and established his garden, nursery and tropical plant collection at Guaratiba. This property was donated to the Brazilian government in 1985 and became a national monument. Now called Sítio Roberto Burle Marx, under the direction of IPHAN-Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional / Ministério da Cultura, it houses over 3,500 species of plants. The house was rebuilt in a valley on the site of a garden house
Garden house
The term garden house can mean:* a small building in a garden * a small house in a large garden* a house built under the provision of special legislation for instance a friggebod....
belonging to the original plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
estate.
Roberto Burle Marx founded a landscape studio in 1955 and in the same year he founded a landscape company, called Burle Marx & Cia. Ltda.
Much of his work has a sense of timelessnes and perfection. His aesthetics were often nature based, for example, never mixing flower colours, utilisation of big groups of the same specimen, using native plants and making a rocky field into a relaxing garden. He was very interested in each plant's character and what effect that has on the whole garden. He opened an office in Caracas, Venezuela in 1956 and started working with architects Jose Tabacow and Haruyoshi Ono in 1968. Marx worked on commissions thorough out Brazil, Argentina, in Chile and many other South American countries, France, South Africa, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. Additionally his artwork can be found displayed throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro “it is an open-air museum of works displaying his unmistakable style, one wholly his own” (Montero 2001 p. 29). Roberto Burle Marx’s 62 year career ended when he died June 4, 1994 two months before his 85th birthday.
He spent a lot of time in the Brazilian forests where he was able to study and explore. This enabled him to add significantly to the botanical
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
sciences, by discovering new rocks and plants for example. At least 30 plants bear his name. Marx was also involved in efforts to protect and conserve the rain forest from the destructive commercial activities of deforestation for bananas and other crops and clear cutting of timber.
Marx’s work “can be summarized in four general design concepts—the use of native tropical vegetation as a structural element of design, the rupture of symmetrical patterns in the conception of open spaces, the colorful treatment of pavements, and the use of free forms in water features” (Vaccarino 2000, p. 17). This approach is exemplified by the Copacabana Beach promenade, where native sea breeze resistant trees and palms appear in groupings along Avenida Atlantica. These groupings punctuate Portugese stone mosaics which form a giant abstract painting where no section along the promenade is the same. This “painting” is viewed from the balconies of hotels, and offers an ever changing view for those driving along the beach. The mosaics continue the entire two and a half mile distance of the beach. The water feature, in this case, is of course the ocean and beach, which is bordered by a 30 foot wide continuous scallop patterned mosaic walk (Eliovson 1991; Montero 2001). Copacabana Beach is “the most famous in Brazil” (Eliovson 1991 p. 103).
Awards
Roberto Burle Marx has received the following prizes, diplomas of merit and honorary memberships: The landscape architecture prize at the 2nd International Exhibition of Architecture (1953), title of Knight of the Order of the Crown from Belgium (1959), Diploma d’Honneur in Paris (1959), the Santos Dumont Medal of the Brazilian Government (1963), the Fine Arts Medal of The American Institute of Architects in Washington (1965), doctor of the Royal College of Art, London (1982) and an honorary doctorate from the Queen of Holland. The Missouri Botanical Garden awarded him the Greensfelder Award and the Kentucky Botanic Garden proclaimed October 14, 1985 in his honor (Eliovson 1991).Work
- Landscape design of some gardens in the public buildingBuildingIn architecture, construction, engineering, real estate development and technology the word building may refer to one of the following:...
s of BrasíliaBrasíliaBrasília is the capital city of Brazil. The name is commonly spelled Brasilia in English. The city and its District are located in the Central-West region of the country, along a plateau known as Planalto Central. It has a population of about 2,557,000 as of the 2008 IBGE estimate, making it the... - Ministry of Army - water gardenWater gardenWater gardens, also known as aquatic gardens, are a type of man-made water feature. A water garden is defined as any interior or exterior landscape or architectural element whose primarily purpose is to house, display, or propagate a particular species or variety of aquatic plant...
and excellent use of concreteConcreteConcrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
forms. - Foreign Affairs Building
- Ministry of EducationMinistry of Education (Brazil)The Ministry of Education , MEC, is a Brazilian government ministry.Functions of this ministry: national education policy, early childhood education, elementary education, secondary education, higher education, youth and adult education, among other teachings Taking their proper decisions so that...
- roof garden completed in 1937. Marx gained international recognition and admiration for this abstractAbstract artAbstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
design. - Copacabana promenade - PavementPavement (architecture)A pavement in architecture is a stone or tile structure, the pavement, which can serve as a floor or an external feature. Pavements can be made of flagstones which are used for things like paving gardens, tiles also there were mosaics which were commonly used by the Romans.When along the side of...
landscape, large scale (4 km long) mosaicMosaicMosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...
completed in 1970 on famous Rio de Janeiro beachBeachA beach is a geological landform along the shoreline of an ocean, sea, lake or river. It usually consists of loose particles which are often composed of rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles or cobblestones...
. (Influenced by Portuguese pavementPortuguese pavementPortuguese pavement , is a traditional style pavement used for many pedestrian areas in Portugal, it can also be found in Olivenza , and throughout the old Portuguese colonies such as Brazil and Macau...
(PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Calçada Portuguesa)) - Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, 1954
- Flamengo Park - large public park in Rio de Janeiro built on landfill
- Venetian Palace - entrance, and extreme use of scale.
- Parque del EsteParque del EsteParque del Este officially Parque Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda is an urban park of 0.82 km² in the east of Caracas, designed by Brazilian landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx. Opened in 1961, the park is served by the Caracas Metro .- External links :...
, CaracasCaracasCaracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, VenezuelaVenezuelaVenezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south... - Cascade Garden, Longwood GardensLongwood GardensLongwood Gardens consists of over 1,077 acres of gardens, woodlands, and meadows in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, United States in the Brandywine Creek Valley...
, PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to... - Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
(Completed posthumously) - Peru Square, Buenos AiresBuenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, ArgentinaArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
(Demolished) - Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) ParkKLCC ParkKLCC Park is a public park located in the vicinity of Suria KLCC, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The park has been designed to provide greenery to Petronas Twin Towers and the areas surrounding it.-Design:...
, Kuala LumpurKuala LumpurKuala Lumpur is the capital and the second largest city in Malaysia by population. The city proper, making up an area of , has a population of 1.4 million as of 2010. Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as the Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.2 million...
, Malaysia - Casa Forte Square (Praça de Casa Forte), RecifeRecifeRecife is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in Brazil with 4,136,506 inhabitants, the largest metropolitan area of the North/Northeast Regions, the 5th-largest metropolitan influence area in Brazil, and the capital and largest city of the state of Pernambuco. The population of the city proper...
, Pernambuco-Brazil