Pioneer Information
This firm was established in 1983 in Boston by landscape architects Peter Walker and Martha Schwartz. Having met while Schwartz was studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the couple had married in 1979. Their subsequent professional partnership was born out of a mutual appreciation of landscape as an art form. By 1984 the firm had relocated to San Francisco, taking on more staff and opening a second office in New York. Drawing upon Walker’s and Schwartz’s respective backgrounds in landscape architecture and fine arts, the partnership sought to create designs that challenged traditional notions of landscape architecture interpreted through the lens of modern art. The firm took on several projects for institutions and corporate offices, including Harvard University, the University of California, Irvine, and IBM. Among their notable landscapes are Harvard University’s Tanner Fountain and Cambridge Center Roof Garden, the Institute for Advanced Biological Research in Portland, Oregon, and the Solana Village Center in Houston, Texas. In 1987 the practice submitted the winning design for Marina Linear Park, later renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade, in San Diego, California, completed by Walker’s successor firm, Peter Walker William Johnson and Partners. Walker and Schwartz’s practice dissolved in 1989 and was reformed by Walker, then in partnership with William “Bill” Johnson. In 1990 Schwartz opened an independent firm, Martha Schwartz Partners, headquartered in London. Walker and Schwartz divorced in 2000.
