Cornelia Oberlander

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, OC (born 20 June 1921) is a Canadian landscape architect based in Vancouver, British Columbia. During her career she has contributed to the designs of many high-profile buildings in both Canada and the United States, including the Robson Square and Law Courts Complex in Vancouver, the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Chancery in Washington D.C., the Library Square at the Vancouver Public Library, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, and Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly Building in Yellowknife. Her firm, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander Landscape Architects, was founded in 1953, when she moved to Vancouver.

Life

Oberlander was born at Muelheim-Ruhr, Germany, on June 20, 1921. In 1938, when she was 18, she and her sister and mother escaped Nazi persecution after the "Kristallnacht" [Night of Broken Glass] pogram and fled to England, and then emigrated to the United States in 1939. Her mother, Beate Hahn, a horticulturist who wrote gardening books for children, fostered in her a deep love and appreciation for nature from a young age. In an interview with Mechtild Manus, tracing the roots of Oberlander's interests in landscape architecture, Oberlander stated "At the age of eleven...I studied a mural in the artist's studio showing the river Rhine and an imaginary town. When I asked the artist about the green spaces in this mural, she told me that these were parks. When I came home I told my mother 'I want to make parks.' From there all my education was directed towards becoming a landscape architect."

In 1944 Oberlander received a BA from Smith College, and in 1947 was among the first class of women to graduate from Harvard with a degree in landscape architecture. In her interview with Hall she states, "When I went to Smith, women who wanted to become landscape architects went to the Cambridge School, a part of Harvard University, because at that time, women could not attend Harvard. But with the war that changed, and in 1943 I was one of the very first women to be admitted to the Harvard Graduate School of Design." Her future husband, Peter Oberlander, received a PhD in regional planning from Harvard, and they met at a class picnic. They were married in 1953 and now have three children.

Oberlander began work with Louis Kahn and Oscar Stonorov in Philadelphia and then with landscape architect Dan Kiley in Vermont before moving with her husband in 1953 to Vancouver, where she founded a small landscape architecture firm. In Vancouver, Oberlander became interested in the modern art movement led by Bertie Binning and Ned Pratt, which combined art and architecture to address the connections between urbanism and surrounding natural settings. In 1999-2000, she contributed her expertise to the Vancouver Art Gallery's Out of This Century exhibition, guiding patrons through the selection of visual art pieces that were chosen from the gallery's permanent collection (by Oberlander and five other Vancouverites) to reflect and represent the city's art scene through the decades.

The early years of Oberlander's career were dedicated to designing landscapes for low-income housing projects and playgrounds, the most famous of which is the Children's Creative Centre for Expo 67 in Montreal. She now practices on a more commercial scale, working with architects and other professionals from different disciplines to create aesthetic solutions for challenging projects. Before beginning a project she researches it thoroughly to ensure that her innovative schemes will also be practical and long-lasting. Oberlander always approaches a project from an environmental standpoint, stating in her Convocation Address for the acceptance of an honorary degree from Simon Fraser University:

I dream of Green Cities with Green Buildings where rural and urban activities live in harmony.[...] "Achieving a fit" between the built form and the land has been my dictum. This can only be done if all our design-related professions collaborate and thereby demonstrate co-operatively their relevance in meeting the enormous developmental challenges facing our increasingly crowded urban regions.

Her concern for the environment and for people in general is further exemplified by her involvement with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus. Oberlander and her husband, Peter, visited Israel for a congress with the International Federation of Landscape Architects in 1962. According to the Jewish Independent, the Oberlanders were in Israel to study irrigation systems but they "fell more deeply in love with the land and its people." The Oberlanders engaged in and spearheaded many activities to benefit the university from 1979 on, including: setting up a Canadian Studies Program, bringing boxes of Canadian textbooks to Israel for donation to the university, developing a botanical garden, working with a team of planners to assist the community of Ashkalon in accommodating settlers from North Africa and Georgia, and advocating the restoration of historic buildings on the campus. The Oberlanders were recently honored for their contributions by the Vancouver chapter of Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2004 and have visited Israel many times in their philanthropic efforts.

Hahn Oberlander has received numerous awards for her efforts in the field of landscape architecture including the Order of Canada (1990); an honorary law degree from UBC (1991); a commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada (1992); the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Allied Medal (1995); honoree of Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem fundraising gala (2004); an honorary law degree from SFU (2005); Smith College (2002); Ryerson University (2001); McGill University (2008) Dalhousie (2008); and an honorary membership to the Architectural Institute of British Columbia. The International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), announced on June 9, 2011 that Cornelia Hahn Oberlander is the winner of the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award – the International Federation of Landscape Architects’ premier award – for 2011.

Important Works

• New York Times Building, New York, New York (with Renzo Piano and HM White Site Architects, 2002)
• Canadian Embassy, Berlin, Germany (with Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, 1999-2005)
• C. K. Choi Building for the Institute of Asian Research at UBC (with Matsuzaki Wright Architects, 1996)
• Vancouver Public Library (with Moshe Safdie Architects, 1995)
• Northwest Territories Legislative Building (with Matsuzaki/Wright Architects, 1995)
• Canadian Chancery in Washington, DC (with Arthur Erickson Architects, 1989)
• National Gallery of Canada (with Moshe Safdie Architects, 1988)
• Co-authored Trees in the City with Ira Bruce Nadel and Lesley R. Bohm, 1977
• Museum of Anthropology at UBC (with Arthur Erickson Architects and Stantec Architecture 1976, 2003–)
• Robson Square and Law Courts complex (with Arthur Erickson Architects, 1974–1983, 2003–)

Sources

• Susan Herrington. Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-81393-459-4
• Charles A. Birnbaum and Stephanie S. Foell. Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-81392-789-3.
• Kathy Stinson. Love Every Leaf: The Life of Landscape Architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. Toronto: Tundra, 2008. ISBN 978-0-88776-804-0
• Mechtild Manus and Lisa Rochon. Picturing Landscape Architecture: Projects of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander as seen by Etta Gerdes. Munich: Callwey / Montreal: Goethe-Institute, 2006. ISBN 3-7667-1669-7 / 9783766716699
• Cornelia Oberlander in The Canadian Encyclopedia
• Katharine Hamer, "A home fit for King David: Architects created a space tailored to Jewish independent school", Jewish Independent, 17 February 2006.
• Cornelia Oberlander to present new park design April 1, City of Toronto, 21 March 2003.
• Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Cartage.org: Speaker Biographies
• Waterfall Building Green Roof Case Study, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, January 2002 (pdf)
• [1] new link to BCSLA Web Atlas October 2013
• Library Square Building aerial view
• Cornelia Oberlander archive at the Canadian Centre for Architecture

External links

• corneliaoberlander.ca