City Style Article |
Building a Following
Despite an aesthetic disconnect, Cambridge-based landscape architect Martha Schwartz cherishes Boston. Even if the city hasn’t always loved her back.
By Meaghan O'Neill
Urbane Outfitters
LOCAL NOTION Martha Schwartz Partners plan for the interior landscape of the redeveloped Natick Mall was inspired by New Englands birch trees and stone walls.
OUTSIDE IN To extend the theme of the new exterior surroundings into the mall itself, abstracted leaves will float above manmade trees.
BRIGHT IDEA Daylight filters in from skylights through the conceptual forest to the floor below.
LOCAL NOTION Martha Schwartz Partners plan for the interior landscape of the redeveloped Natick Mall was inspired by New Englands birch trees and stone walls.
OUTSIDE IN To extend the theme of the new exterior surroundings into the mall itself, abstracted leaves will float above manmade trees.
BRIGHT IDEA Daylight filters in from skylights through the conceptual forest to the floor below.
In 1979, a young Martha Schwartz burst onto the scene with one of her first—and most contentious—projects, the Bagel Garden: her own Back Bay parterre lined with shellacked bagels and purple gravel. MIT’s Necco Garden (crafted from candy wafers and tires) and the Splice Garden (an AstroTurf and gravel rooftop) at Cambridge’s Whitehead Institute followed, solidifying her reputation for blurring the line between landscape architecture and art.
Now Schwartz has won a prestigious National Design Award—the industry’s equivalent of a Pulitzer—from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt museum. Despite the accolade, local clients have been few and far between—her public and private works appear more often in cities with a decidedly less Brahmin aesthetic (Miami, New York, Munich). Nonetheless, she based her company, Martha Schwartz Partners, near Porter Square, and teaches at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. And while Boston hasn’t yet wholly embraced her forward-thinking style, Schwartz is about to get some well-deserved local recognition—she’s helping transform the Natick Mall into an upscale shopping, dining, and condo development, to be completed in spring ’08.
Now Schwartz has won a prestigious National Design Award—the industry’s equivalent of a Pulitzer—from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt museum. Despite the accolade, local clients have been few and far between—her public and private works appear more often in cities with a decidedly less Brahmin aesthetic (Miami, New York, Munich). Nonetheless, she based her company, Martha Schwartz Partners, near Porter Square, and teaches at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. And while Boston hasn’t yet wholly embraced her forward-thinking style, Schwartz is about to get some well-deserved local recognition—she’s helping transform the Natick Mall into an upscale shopping, dining, and condo development, to be completed in spring ’08.
Originally published in Boston magazine, September 2006
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