BY JAMES TRULOVE
Back from a dozen years in London, the designer is focusing on climate and the world she has made her home.
THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM “MARTHA SCHWARTZ, RECONNECTING” IN THE JULY 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE. FOR THE FULL ARTICLE, PLEASE SEE THE MAGAZINE.
Martha Schwartz, FASLA, and her business partner and husband, Markus Jatsch, last year relocated from London to Brooklyn, though the London office remains the headquarters of their firm, Martha Schwartz Partners. Schwartz continues to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design?though her projects have taken her firm just about everywhere but the United States. James Trulove, a former editor of LAM, who has known Schwartz for years, joined her and Jatsch, who is trained as an architect, for a conversation to find out what prompted the move and where Schwartz is directing her design and teaching now. James Trulove: You now have offices in New York, London, and Shanghai. I guess there are many opportunities for a landscape architect in China given the enormous amount of construction that is taking place. What is it like to work there"
Schwartz: Unfortunately the quality of much of the built work is poor, and this thing about them wanting to build 400 cities in 20 years?unfortunately, it was very market-driven. There wasn?t any kind of top-down city planning where instead of just building high-rises, they said, ?Let?s build a city.? It was just building high-rise tow...