Roberto Burle Marx was among the leading landscape architects of the twentieth century. Burle Marx's work encompassed a range of scales from private gardens, such as the Fazenda Vargem Grande and his home, Sítio Burle Marx, to urban squares and large-scale public projects, including Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beachfront and Flamengo Park, and the Parque del Este in Caracas. In partnership with Haruyoshi Ono from 1968, the significance of Burle Marx's landscape architecture is often attributed to his use of abstract curves and forms that rarely employ symmetry, and his use of tropical, mainly indigenous Brazilian, flora. Burle Marx was driven by a passionate agenda to improve and conserve landscapes and consequently the lives of the people who live in them.