Conserving the spirit of Burle Marx gardens in Recife, Brazil

This paper has as its main aim to present Burle Marx gardens inventory as an instrument to conserve the spirit of the Recife urban landscape in Northeast Brazil. In Burle Marx’s garden conception (as one of the most famous landscape designer all over the world), vegetation is the main element of an architectural composition which takes into account the cultural aspect. He showed this principle in the first public gardens designed from 1935 to 1958 in Recife. The gardens were drawing on ecological, artistic and educational principles and were referred to as ‘living monuments ’ according to the Charter of Florence (1981). Until 2002 there was lack of conservation in most of these gardens. They were threatened to loose Burle Marx conception for new interventions with any artistic, historical and cultural values. The practice of conserving historic gardens began to be discussed in Recife in 2002 when consideration was given to the restoration of two of the gardens: Euclides da Cunha and Faria Neves. The restoration was based on the proceedings of the Charter of Florence exploring pleasure and meditation in order to preserve the spirit of Burle Marx garden. The first part of the inventory deals with six gardens and it will be continued to a group of the eighteen Burle Marx public gardens in Recife