Cornelia Hahn Oberlander dies aged 99 — LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AOTEAROA

Landscape architects across the world, including here in Aotearoa, are mourning the loss of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, who has died in Vancouver aged 99.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation announced her death with “profound sadness”, referring to her as the New York Times had, “the grande dame of landscape architecture”.

Cornelia Oberlander. Photo credit: City of Vancouver

Oberlander is the namesake of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, created by the Washington-based Foundation.

The University of British Columbia’s School of Landscape Architecture, where Oberlander was an honorary professor, said her legacy is extraordinary.

“She leaves us with landscape architecture that is beautiful, artful, outspoken, and rich with insight about nature, people, civics, and the ties that bind them,” SALA wrote. “She also leaves us with a model of how closely-held values of social integrity, creative collaboration, and ecology-informed landscape design can define and propel a productive seven-decade career.”

NZILA Advocacy Panel member Jacky Bowring met Oberlander in 2016, at the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Summit in Philadelphia, which was focussed on developing the New Declaration of Landscape on the 50th anniversary of the original Declaration.

“I have to say it is amazing to realise she must have been 95 at that time, which is immensely inspiring, given she was still practising, continuing to have a strong presence in the profession, and contributing to the spirited debate about landscape architecture’s role in the future of the planet.

“At the LAF Summit Cornelia was on a panel with Laurie Olin and Peter Walker, three iconic landscape architects whose careers covered many of the intervening years since the first Declaration in 1966. In fact, Cornelia’s career was well underway by that time, and she worked on housing projects with Dan Kiley and Louis Kahn, and was a significant influence on revolutionising playground design in the context of Modernism.”

Jacky Bowring says Oberlander was one of the first female graduates of landscape architecture from Harvard University, and one of the few who continued to practice.

“While we might take for granted that the profession today is relatively balanced in terms of diversity, some of the women pioneers around the world were very much outnumbered, and their profiles are not always so well known – and raising our understanding of these contributors to the development of the profession internationally is an important part of appreciating the evolution of landscape architecture.”

Just days before her death the City of Vancouver voted to honour her with its Freedom of the City award for her “outstanding accomplishments in bringing world-class landscape design to Canada, and to Vancouver in particular.”

Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart called her a pioneer in the field, saying her work continues to define the character of her adopted city.

Image credit: Canadian Society of Landscape Architects.

Oberlander escaped Nazi persecution aged 18, and immigrated to the United States, before she and her husband, architect and planner Peter, made Vancouver their home in the 1950s.

The Vancouver City Council said in a statement: “Vancouver residents and visitors continue to benefit from Oberlander's dream of 'green cities' that infuse rural and urban harmony.”

Her contributions to public city spaces include iconic logs as seating on public beaches, Robson Square, the Vancouver Public Library Central Branch rooftop garden, and the VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre.

She also designed landscapes for the Vancouver General Hospital burn unit garden, and UBC's Museum of Anthropology and the C. K. Choi Building.

Oberlander designed landscapes for non-market housing(housing offering affordable rents or ownership in perpetuity) and playgrounds across the country, helped draft national guidelines for the creation of play spaces in Canada, and worked on major projects like the National Gallery of Canada, and the Canadian Chancery in Washington, DC.

She was also a pillar of the Jewish community which referred to her as a “true icon”.

"The Freedom of the City Award honours Cornelia's lifetime of accomplishments in a month that celebrates the impact that Jewish Canadians have had on society as a whole," said Ezra S. Shanken, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Vancouver.