Located west of Rio de Janeiro, the site exemplifies a successful project developed over 40 years by landscape architect and artist Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) to create a “living artwork” and a “landscape laboratory,” utilizing native plants and drawing inspiration from modernist ideas. Initiated in 1949, the garden possesses the key characteristics that came to define Burle Marx’s landscape gardens and greatly influenced the development of modern gardens worldwide. Its features include sinuous shapes, exuberant mass plantings, carefully arranged architectural plants, dramatic color contrasts, the use of tropical flora, and the incorporation of elements from traditional folk culture. By the late 1960s, the site housed the most comprehensive collection of Brazilian plants, alongside other rare tropical species. The site now cultivates 3,500 species of tropical and subtropical flora in harmony with the native vegetation of the region, including mangrove swamps, restinga (a distinct type of tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest), and the Atlantic Forest. Sítio Roberto Burle Marx embodies an ecological concept of form as a process, emphasizing social collaboration as the basis for the preservation of environment and culture. It is the first modern tropical garden to be included in the World Heritage List.
www.ftn-books.com has the SM 161 / Stedelijk Museum on Burle Marx now available. Published in 1956 and designed by Sandberg makes this small and scarce publication one of the first on Landscape architecture and Burle Marx.
