Cornelia Hahn Oberlander (photo by Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation, 2008)
Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, a leading Canadian landscape architect, died May 22, a month before her 100th birthday.
Oberlander fled Nazi Germany at age 18, moving to the United States with her family. She earned a degree in landscape architecture from Harvard in 1947 and later moved to Vancouver, where she established her practice in 1953.
She has received numerous honours, including the inaugural Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture in 2016 and the Companion of the Order of Canada in 2017.
Her designs in Vancouver include Robson Square and the rooftop garden of the Vancouver Public Library's central branch.
Oberlander was honoured earlier this year with a retrospective at the West Vancouver Art Museum. Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Genius Loci, a co-venture with the Art Gallery of Alberta that included sketches, plans and photographs for projects Oberlander designed over her 69-year career.
Among her many accomplishments, she served as the chief landscape architect for the National Gallery of Canada, where director Sasha Suda remembered her as someone "who believed in nature and how it affects the way we experience art whether we are outside a magnificent building or inside an intimate courtyard."
The City of Vancouver posthumously bestowed the Freedom of the City Award, its highest honour, on Oberlander.
“Cornelia Oberlander was one of Vancouver’s most renowned Jewish residents, and during Jewish Heritage Month this May, we honour her outstanding accomplishments in bringing world-class landscape design to Canada, and to Vancouver in particular,” said Mayor Kennedy Stewart.
Source: National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Sun
