Cornelia Hahn Oberlander

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander

Cornelia Oberlander is an inspiring landscape architect, originally from Germany, but residing in Canada for most of her life. She attended Smith College in the early 1940s, where faculty member Kate Ries Koch first taught her that landscape architecture was not just about gardens. In 1944 she joined Harvard as one of the first female students, where she says ‘we learned to look at landscape differently – from conception to realisation – as something abstract rather than decorative’. After her graduation she worked for landscape architect James C. Rose, before joining the Regional Plan Association in New York City, and then moving to Philadelphia to serve as Community Planner for the Citizens’ Council on City Planning. There she worked on Schuylkill Falls public housing project alongside Dan Kiley, who she went on to work with further. It was during this time that she established her ethic of the social responsibility of landscape architects, eventually including site ecology within this as well.

Schuylkill Falls Public Housing Project

Oberlander’s design approach varies based on the project, developing careful details and specifications, as well as actively engaging in the implementation and installation process, to extract and integrate a unique solution for each site. However, her overarching philosophy revolves around environment protection and liveable landscapes in urban settings, saying ‘my passion is to be with nature and introduce people to it from all levels of society’. She actively promotes rewilding, community consultation, pedestrian-friendly accessibility and creative playgrounds for children, designing roughly 70 playgrounds in Canada, including the Children’s Creative Centre, which served 30,000 children. Oberlander said ‘I did not want to do a playground with playground equipment that was available. So this playground featured five things – hills and dale, water and sand, and buildable parts that the children could put together’, creating an interactive experience that encouraged engagement and social interaction. She believes in the power of landscape architecture to ‘save the world’, expressing ‘I believe in the therapeutic effects of greenery on the human soul’ and linking a connection between social justice and good design – ‘Beauty is important. It unites people and makes something meaningful to the user’.

Children's Creative Centre

Just by a brief look into Cornelia’s life I can see she is incredibly passionate about landscape architecture and the good that can come from it. Most students leave university wanting to change the world, but few do so, yet it is clear that she has never lost that desire. Her philosophy of forming connections between people and their landscape through environmental protection and liveable landscapes is something I very much admire, as well as her design approach of varying styles based on the unique project she is completing. I feel it is important to begin each project with an open mind, hoping to learn and take inspiration from the character and identity of a landscape, and finding ways to make it enjoyable for everyone.

‘I dream of Green Cities with Green Buildings where rural and urban activities live in harmony’

References

Ditmars, H. (2018) Landscape Architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander on Why it Should be easier to be Green. Available at: https://www.wallpaper.com/architecture/landscape-architect-cornelia-hahn-oberlander-interview-canada (Accessed: 9 April 2021)

Vernon, N. (n.d.) Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. Available at: https://tclf.org/pioneer/cornelia-hahn-oberlander (Accessed: 9 April 2021)

Wikipedia Contributors. (2021) Cornelia Oberlander. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Oberlander (Accessed: 9 April 2021)

The Cultural Landscape Foundation. (n.d.) Cornelia Hahn Oberlander Projects: Children’s Creative Centre. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wInZ9uTYp4g (Accessed: 9 April 2021)