Robert Burle Marx; Landscape Architect

Robert Burle Marx, 84, a world-renowned landscape architect and ecologist who designed more than 1,500 parks and gardens, including Rio de Janeiro’s Quinta de Boa Vista Gardens, Flamengo Park, Copacabana Beach and Rodrigo de Freitas Lake. He won honors from France’s Architecture Academy and London’s Royal College of Arts. Marx studied painting and sculpture in Paris in the 1930s and became a self-taught biologist and world expert on Brazilian flora. Thirteen flower species were named after him. In 1972 he took up residence at his Santo Antonio da Bica Ranch outside Rio, which he transformed into an immense laboratory of exotic plant species from around the world. In Rio de Janeiro on Saturday of stomach cancer.