Martha Schwartz

Martha Schwartz has an extensive background in academia, until recently she was a tenured Professor in Practice at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, a position she held for 16 years until her retirement. She is a landscape architect, urbanist, and climate activist.

Her work and teaching focus on the urban public realm landscape and its importance in making cities “climate ready”. For more than 40 years, she and the firm, Martha Schwartz Partners, have completed projects around the globe, from site-specific art installations to public spaces, parks, master-planning, and reclamation.

Schwartz is now heavily engaged in strategic land-use and landscape planning in assisting leadership in preparing for the effects of climate change that their cities will face soon. Additionally, Schwartz founded MAYDAY.EARTH, a climate change non-profit focused on answering the distress call from our planet due to unchecked Global Warming caused by climate change. Martha, along with several BCU academic staff members, is also attached to the West Midlands National Park Lab.