Groundbreaking

Clare Cooper Marcus's Groundbreaking is a sweeping autobiographical memoir that spans nearly nine decades of personal history. Moving from a wartime childhood in England through her academic career in the United States, the book weaves together stories of resilience, intellectual discovery, and the healing power of nature. The narrative alternates between richly detailed life episodes-growing up as an evacuee during WWII, becoming a pioneering woman in academia, raising a family as a single mother-and lyrical "Garden Stories," meditations rooted in her Berkeley garden that serve as metaphors for growth, loss, and renewal. Through these interwoven strands, Marcus reflects on identity, motherhood, love, resilience, and the solace found in landscapes both cultivated and wild. Ultimately, Groundbreaking is a meditation on survival and thriving-on how land, gardens, and memory shape a life. It is as much a personal journey as it is a testimony to the enduring human need for grounding in place and nature.

Author Clare Cooper Marcus (1934–2026) passed away on January 19th, 2026, weeks before Groundbreaking, her autobiography, went to press. She was Professor Emerita, Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of California, Berkeley and is mourned by colleagues in the College of Environmental Design. She was internationally recognized for her teaching, research, and publications on the social and psychological implications of design, especially regarding urban open space, family housing, outdoor space in healthcare facilities, and environments for children and the elderly. She was a pioneer in developing social factors curriculum. Clare Marcus initiated several influential books. She is coauthor with Wendy Sarkissian of a guidebook considered essential to anyone involved with housing design, Housing As If People Mattered. After retiring from UC Berkeley, she consulted on therapeutic landscapes in healthcare, co-authoring two discipline-defining books: Healing Gardens with Marni Barnes, and Therapeutic Landscapes with Naomi Sachs. Besides her books on professional practice, she is author of a book about individuals' personal meanings of home that got national attention, House As a Mirror of Self, and a memoir about her innermost relationship with the rural environment of the remote Scottish island she loved, Iona Dreaming. She was honored in her life by many organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts and the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) and was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and ASLA and AIA Merit Awards for her books.