Roberto Burle Marx and the modern gardens of Brazilian social housing

Abstract

The canonical history of modern architecture in Brazil from the 1930s through the 1960s reveals minimal assessment of the innovative social housing complexes constructed for the working poor, including communal green spaces for repose, recreation, and social interaction. The modernist landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994), well known for his gardens for governmental and cultural buildings, also created landscape designs for several experimental social housing complexes in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in collaboration with the architects Marcelo and Milton Roberto, Eduardo Kneese de Mello, and Affonso Eduardo Reidy. This chapter explores Burle Marx’s masterfully integrated landscape designs for state-sponsored social housing projects in Brazil between the late 1930s and the early 1950s. By the late 1960s, however, Burle Marx’s interest in social housing waned, and his advisory depositions written while a cultural counselor to the military regime from 1967–1974 reveal his expression of an inherent conflict between social issues such as housing rights and the nascent environmental movement in Brazil. Within the context of environmentalism, Burle Marx’s consular position pieces may be interpreted as reinforcing the political programs of the state and the interests of the elite, rather than defending the human rights of the working poor by providing access to affordable social housing with equitable public spaces.