Martha Schwartz Partners

Martha Schwartz Partners (formerly Martha Schwartz, Inc.) was founded in 1990 to provide a full range of landscape design services conceived and executed at the highest artistic level possible. Over the years, our practice has evolved from providing landscape services primarily for private sector urban environments to large-scale public projects, land reclamation and planning studies on complex sites. Our landscape designs have received award-winning attention, and our work has been featured in numerous prominent publications. To create these innovative landscapes, our office explores the relationship between landscape, art, and culture, and challenges traditional concepts of landscape design. To implement our designs, we offer a full range of services including site analysis, master planning, site planning, conceptual design, construction documentation, and field observation services. Currently, Martha Schwartz Inc. has two offices – one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and the other in London, UK – and employs 40 people. Our two locations give us the flexibility of coordinating projects from either office with Martha Schwartz, as President, involved in directing both locations.

Martha Schwartz Partners believe that landscape architecture has a positive influence on people by providing an environment that engenders freedom of thought, creativity, and curiosity and it is from those beliefs and values that our designs are realized. Our design philosophy emanates from a strong passion for exploring our surrounding environments and pursuing quality over quantity. Our philosophy motivates us to conduct extensive research and develop flexible design frameworks that conceive developments as part of the landscape and it furthermore inspires us to bring total commitment of time, talent and energy to each project.

Our methods of working are based on experiment and a fertile debate among all parties involved in any given project. The initial point of departure is always a unique and particular location with its given set of characteristics and in each project that we undertake, it is our goal to create a memorable and significant site for people to enjoy and from which they come away with a special sense of place. To create these special places we take our cues and design inspiration from the site and context, develop various possible concepts for the site landscape, receive input from the client and its constituency through presentation and dialog, and redesign incorporating the input we have received.

The outcome of this process has led to award winning design for our firm. Our most recent awards were the Chicago Athenaeum Award for Best New Global Design 2007 for Leamouth Peninsula and the 2007 ASLA Honour Award for Mesa Arts and Performance Centre, Arizona, USA. Other awards include the ULI Award for Excellence for Mesa Arts and Entertainment Centre in Arizona, USA in 2006, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award 2006 and the Woman in Design Award for Excellence from Boston Society of Architects in 2004.

Monte Laar Central Park

The Central Park is the heart and focal point of the housing project Gartenstadt Laaerberg. The overall premise for the design is to establish the park as a separate strong entity within the project, providing a striking visual identity and an unforgettable experience.
Martha Schwartz, Inc. proposed a configuration of elongated sculptural landforms, lines of columnar trees and bands of different materials that work together to emphasize the linear quality of the park. These elements are of the same geometric and formal arrangement as the overall layout of the Gartenstadt.

Grand Canal Square

Grand Canal Square is the major public open space in the Dublin Docklands Development area. It is located on Grand Canal in Dublin and forms the focal point of this new development. Facing Grand Canal, it is flanked on its other end by Libeskind’s prominent new theater and entertainment building as well as a new hotel to the north and an office development to the south.

In this setting dominated by contemporary architectural expression, a public space has been created that will offer color and dynamism to Dublin’s open spaces. Keeping with the site’s cultural celebrity setting, the scheme includes a central red “carpet” that leads from the theater to the canal. A green “carpet” connects the new hotel and office developments.

The red carpet is paved in a newly-developed, bright red resin-glass material and is completed by red glowing angled lightsticks that mimic the “bustle” on the red carpet. The green carpet has a calmer expression and offers ample seating on the edges of planters of various heights. The planters, extruded polygons of the green carpet, are planted with marsh vegetation as a reminder of the historic wetland area of the site, and some offer immaculate lawns for lingering and enjoying the spectacular setting. Pushing out of the plaza is a water feature of randomly-stacked green marble that is overflowing with bubbling water.

The square is further criss-crossed by narrow paths that allow for movement across the square in any possible direction while still allowing big activities such as markets or fairs. The new square will be an urban magnet with twenty-four-hour activity and is an accurate interpretation of Dublin’s energy.

Barclay’s Bank Headquarters

The new headquarters for Barclay’s Bank, designed by HOK architects, with interior outfitting by Pringle Brandon Architects, is located in Canary Wharf, London. Martha Schwartz, Inc. designed the five interior atria within this new building.

Each atrium is six stories high and is surrounded on three sides by offices that look down on the open space. The intention was to create a different environment within each atrium, allowing for various functions. Each of these five spaces creates a new and unique address and image for its six-story surroundings and gives people choices for how and where they want to exist within their office building.

All floors have three-dimensional installations, including hanging artificial materials and floor components of organic plant materials. For the sixth floor installation, artificial bamboo rods hang from the ceiling at varying angles, while a circular seating area is delineated on the floor by real planted bamboo. The arrangement allows for vibrant views from above and offers both privacy and an indoor view at the floor level.

On the twelfth floor, oversize, artificial leaves of the philodendron, Monstera deliciosa, hang from the ceiling, creating a tropical, jungle-like canopy. Beneath these leaves, actual Monstera plants sit in planters alongside various seating options.

The twenty-fourth floor contrasts the jungle with large, colorful, hanging transparencies of deciduous trees. This abstract deciduous forest is balanced by potted deciduous trees on the floor below. The top atrium of the building takes on the form of a geometric indoor hedge garden with blue and green glass boxes suspended from the ceiling. Each atrium is different from the next, yet all exist as informal breakout spaces, lounges, and gathering points. At night, the spaces are lit to allow the collection of shapes and images to glow on the interior and exterior of the building.

Mesa Arts Center

These colored glass structures serve a double purpose in that they are also the structure for cooling mist jets that spray down to the walkway from above. Translucent colored glass screen walls, back-lit by the afternoon sun, hold the shadows of cacti and other distinctly textured plants in silhouette.

Paralleling the shadow walk theme is a water story appropriate to the southwest: a boulder-filled arroyo runs along the western side of the shadow walk for its entire length. From time to time, a strong pulse of water rushes through the riverbed from north to south, recalling the flash floods characteristic of the region. A welcome side benefit of this exciting event is the cooling and humidifying effect of the water evaporating from the wet boulders in the interval between episodes.

Another motif running through the shadow walk is that of the banquet table. The colored glass forms used to catch light cast shade, and color shadows take the form of sculptural and symbolic tables and chairs. These forms are abstracted to create a poetic statement about people coming together in celebration, a perfect family-oriented image for the Mesa Arts and Entertainment Center and for the heart of the community.

Geraldton Mine Project

Geraldton, Canada; Barrick Gold, Client; In the Geraldton Mine project, mining tailings are being reshaped for both aesthetic and economic reasons. Geraldton, Ontario, located approximately 200 miles northeast of Thunder Bay is the site of a closed gold mine where 14 million tons of tailings from the mines have been left. These tailings cover a 170 acre area of land, 27' deep. This huge flat pile of tailings greets visitors at the main entrance to the town. In order to spur economic redevelopment, the town has made the decision to make something (literally) of the sea of tailings, by improving their appearance and heightening the visitors experience of them. Design alternatives sculpt the flat pile into compelling sculptural landforms which serve as a dynamic roadway edge and a gateway to the town. The landform is designed to be much more than just a powerful visual feature. Trails invite one to walk, bird watch, mountain bike, snow board, or sled. Of special importance to the area’s tourism is the inclusion of snowmobile trails. Extending the adjacent golf course from 9 holes to 18 onto the tailings is a distinct possibility.

Technical constraints were key to the final form of the earthwork. The different types and sizes of earth moving equipment and their turning radii provided guidelines for the grading plan. A primary objective in the project is to balance cut and fill, and to maintain a maximum total earth moving of 150,000 cubic meters. Cut is kept to a minimum as arsenic levels are higher toward the bottom of the pile. There is a cap at the bottom of the pile of tailings, and there is a maximum of an additional 5 meters that can occur on top. Standing water has been considered as a design element, but the water table has been respected by the regrading. Storm drainage is maintained and the proposed earthwork will not impede sight lines for traffic safety.

Six to twelve inches of peat topsoil will be added to disturbed areas to aid in revegetation. A planting plan for the project focuses primarily on native grasses, especially those golden in color. The soil can support plants, although plants will not be watered. The master plan also details tree plantings along Highway 11.

The Geraldton Mine project reveals the power of design to remake a wasteland into a new landscape - a beautiful and powerful earthwork. Even more than an earthwork, this landform is also a cultural artifact, highlighting the location and role of mining in the life of the town.

HUD Plaza Improvements

Washington, D.C. Client: U. S. General Services Administration. Completion: 1998 Although Marcel Breuer's 1968 building for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington, D.C. bears a richly textured facade, its 6-acre plaza is clearly a casualty of the Modernist aesthetic. Without trees or public amenities, the plaza was designed to showcase the building, but is virtually unusable by HUD's 4,800 employees. Adding to the desolation of this landscape is the fact that the base of the building is a solid wall of dark stone that prohibits a visual connection between the life of the building within and that without. HUD's objective for the plaza was to reactivate it by commissioning a new design that would also express the agency's mission of creating habitable spaces for people.

The scheme developed for the plaza repeats a circular motif in white, yellow, and grey, recalling Breuer's use of geometric designs for screens, walls, and ceilings. The plaza is transformed through a strong ground plane, a series of concrete planters containing grass, and white lifesaver-shaped canopies. The 30 foot diameter planters double as seating. The canopies, fabricated of vinyl coated plastic fabric, are raised 14 feet above the ground plane on steel poles. In sharp contrast to the heaviness and somberness of the architecture, these canopies and planters appear to float. As this plaza is built over an underground garage, the canopies also provide shade on a plaza that was not designed to support the soil required for trees.

Lighting gives identity to the plaza as well. Lit from within, the canopies glow at night, recalling the lanterns that illuminate paths in Japanese gardens. A fiber-optic tube casts colored light under the planters making them appear to float on a cloud of light. For the dark wall at the base of the building, a backlit mural has been planned to reflect the people and faces of HUD and create a dramatic backdrop for the plaza.

Jacob Javitz Federal Building East Plaza / 26 Federal Plaza

New York, New York; General Services Administration, New York, client; Emery Roth & Sons, architect. Full service landscape design services for major urban plaza in downtown Manhattan. The design includes traditional New York park elements with a humorous twist: curving wood benches, exaggerated lights, and glass mounds with fog plumes.

Minneapolis Courthouse

Minneapolis, Minnesota; General Services Administration, Washington, D.C., client; Kohn, Pedersen, Fox Associates, architect. Conceptual design through construction documents for the plaza in front of the new Minneapolis Courthouse. The design for the plaza includes grassed earth mounds and silver painted logs as symbolic and sculptural elements which evoke a memory of geological and cultural forms.

Gifu Kitagata Apartments

Kitagata, Japan; Gifu Prefectural Government, client; This courtyard project is part of an experiment in “feminism in housing design” that also includes four apartment buildings designed by Akiko Takahashi, Kazuyo Sejima, Christine Hawley, and Elizabeth Diller. In the project master plan, the courtyard lies between the four separate housing blocks designed by these architects. Because of the diversity of architectural design found within the project, strong site imagery and geometry have been created for the courtyard to unify the distinct parts of the project and to give the project a memorable identity. Before its present use for housing, rice paddies existed on this site. The geometric pattern of raised dikes and sunken paddies provides the metaphor for creating a series of sunken garden “rooms.” These rooms offer a variety of opportunities for passive enjoyment or active play including water features, children’s play opportunities, and public art. In the Willow Court, a sunken, flooded area with willow trees and wetland vegetation is made accessible by a wooden boardwalk. The Four Seasons Garden is a series of four miniature gardens that capture the spirit of each of the seasons and are enclosed by colored glass walls. In the Stone Garden, a circular fountain with stepping stones and rocks that spit water at irregular intervals creates a children’s play pool. The other garden rooms are the Cherry Forecourt, Iris Canal, Dance Floor, Children’s Playground, Sports Court, Water Rill, and Bamboo Garden. Each of these rooms provides a different experiential opportunity for the people who live in this community.

Miami International Airport Sound Barrier

Miami, Florida; Metro-Dade Art in Public Places, client; HNTB in association with Delante/HJ Ross, architects. The project consists of a one-mile-long sound barrier wall along a roadway adjacent to the Miami International Airport and a residential neighborhood. Light is carried through the 20-foot-high precast concrete wall via holes punched through the wall and filled with panes of colored glass. These glass pieces make the visible face of the wall glow with color.

Spoleto Festival Art Installation

Charleston, South Carolina; Spoleto U.S.A., client. Temporary installation of artwork entitled "Field Work" for the 1997 Spoleto U.S.A. Festival. For this art piece at McLeod Plantation, long panels of nine-foot-high scrim will be installed at right angles to the allee of oak trees leading from the plantation house. These panels will create narrow "yards" around each of the slave cabins on the plantation site, and will lead out into the field of sweet grass. The installation will be constructed of cotton scrim material, metal poles, steel wire, wood clothes pins, and field paint.

Whitehead Institute / "Splice Garden"

Cambridge, Massachusetts; Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, client. Landscape design and construction of a light-weight roof garden capturing the spirit of experimentation for the biomedical research institute which specializes in genetic research and gene splicing. The resulting garden juxtaposes a French topiary garden and an austere Japanese Zen garden along a "splice" line. It is composed of astroturf, rolled steel forms, colored gravel, and plastic plants.

Exchange Square

Manchester, England. Client: Manchester Millennium. Exchange Square, a site recovering from a recent bombing, is located in the heart of Manchester, England. A vibrant retail and entertainment district is planned for the area to open up in time for the new millennium. Vital to the design of the square is that the plaza extends out to the building edges as its success, in part, depends on carefully 'borrowing' the activity of the surrounding buildings and streets. Because of the existing topography, the sculpting of a level change in the plaza is the major design factor. The level change accomplishes three things. It creates places for a great variety of activities, it provides a setting for the surrounding buildings, and it makes the square accessible to all.

Connecting the two levels is an exuberance of ramps and stairs which become objects of both movement and stasis. These ramps act as landscape-scale furniture, accommodating movement and informal seating. Set within the curving walls of the ramps are internally lit glass boxes in which are embedded artifacts of the industrial revolution.

The upper level is the largest open area of the site as well as where the majority of retail activity will take place. Inserted into this plane are flush-mounted rail tracks with inset colored glass panels lit from below. The tracks mark the historical importance of railroads in the industrial development of Manchester. The lines of colored light move the project into the twenty-first century. In a city that can be dark and overcast for much of the year, the effective use of light can be a dramatic and wonderful addition to the public realm. Sliding along the tracks are moveable benches that allow seating to be rearranged as needed. The southern edge of the plaza is defined by a row of artificial palm trees which create an exotic intervention and a remarkable threshold to the square.

The lower level is the area of the site that will get the most sunshine and will accommodate outdoor dining with a close relationship to the fountain. The historic line of Hanging Ditch is brought to life through an abstracted river. An excavated 'ditch' is filled with stepping stones and water. Arcing jets spray water along and over the stream. River Birch trees mark the line of the water feature, giving a soft and more casual quality to this area.