On June 22, the day after the 2019 AZ Awards Gala, Azure will host a talk by the legendary landscape architect – and climate change activist – Martha Schwartz.

Martha Schwartz is renowned for the vibrant public spaces she has created around the world over the past 40 years: Village of Yorkville Park in Toronto, completed in 1995; Jacob Javits Plaza in New York (1997); the landscaping for the Swiss Re Headquarters in Munich; the re-programming of Place de la République in Paris and a new central park for the Beiqijia Technology Business District in Beijing. Her firm continues to design exhilarating landscapes around the world.

Schwartz herself, however, has switched gears in the past few years. In what she calls her “second career” she is pressing the landscape architecture profession to confront the realities of climate change. In tandem with her work as a tenured professor in practice of landscape of architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she is teaching climate change mitigation, she is also a founding member of the university’s Working Group of Sustainable Cities at and an active member of the Landscape Architecture Foundation Climate Change Task Force.

In “The Long and Winding Road: Landscape, Art, and My Existential Crisis,” the topic of her Azure Talks presentation, Schwartz will discuss the beginning of her career in art, which set the trajectory for her practice – now in its fourth decade – and shaped the field of landscape architecture. And then she will turn to the topic of the climate crisis, and how she has turned her attention in academia towards understanding the science of climate change as well as the solutions that may help to create a pathway forward – with the aim of encouraging others to participate and act in behalf of achieving climate stability.

This talk qualifies for one ConEd structured learning hour. A certificate will be provided by request, post-event.

This Azure Talk is generously supported by our sponsors, Arper and Scavolini; in partnership with the George Brown School of Design.