Photo: Charles Birnbaum
I was listening to the radio on the way home from work the other day; there was a program (on CBC: Ideas) about Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Canada’s greatest Landscape Architect. Many of her projects have been integral to the design of prestigious structures in Canada and the United States.
Ms. Oberlander was born in Muelheim-Ruhr Germany; but, in 1939, when she was eighteen, the pressures leading up to WW II forced her family to move to the United States. In 1947 she graduated from Harvard with a degree in landscape architecture. She began her career in Philadelphia, moved to Vermont, and finally, in 1953, she relocated to Vancouver with her husband and started her own small business. She developed a fascination for an art movement (led by Bertie Binning and Ned Pratt) that unified architecture and art, with a special interest in the relationship between urbanization and natural ecology.
Some of the many projects she worked on:
- the Robson Square Law Courts (Vancouver, 1983); a progenitor for other North American roof top garden projects
- Jim Everett Memorial Park (UBC, 1986)
- the Museum of Anthropology (UBC, 1976 & 1997): a must see museum if you’re ever in Vancouver!
- the Yellowknife Legislative Assembly Building (Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, 1994)
- C.K. Choi Building, for The Institute of Asian Research (UBC, 1995)
- Library Square’s rooftop garden (Vancouver, 2005)
- the Canadian Embassy in Berlin (2005)
- the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada, 2006)
- the New York Times Building (2007)
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Some of the awards she has received:
- the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Allied Medal (1995)
- American Society of Landscape Architects’ ASLA medal
- The Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honour
- The Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award, from the International Federation of Landscape Architects
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For more information:
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db johnston
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