Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, a German-born Canadian landscape architect, was recognised as a national treasure in Canada. She was honored with the Inaugural Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture in 2016 by the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA). In 2019, the Cultural Landscape Foundation established the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize in her honor. She was born in Muelheim-Ruhr, Germany in June 1921 and immigrated to the United States in late 1938. She was amongst the first female landscape architects upon graduating from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design’s Landscape Architecture Program in 1947. In 1953, with her husband H.Peter Oberlander, who set up the first city planning school in Canada at UBC, the pair moved to Vancouver.
Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. Image courtesy of Province of British Columbia. Image source: https://archinect.com/news/article/150162479/cornelia-hahn-oberlander-international-landscape-architecture-prize-set-to-launch-in-2021, retrieved on 5 September 2021.
Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s designs emphasized exposure to nature for its healing effect, as well as providing opportunities for social interaction in public spaces. Moreover, she recognized early on the climate change crisis and tried to mitigate its effects through her green designs. Some of her noteworthy projects include: the landscape of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver’s Robson Square Provincial Government Center and Courthouse Complex, the Canadian Chancery in Washington D.C, and the Children’s Creative Center for Expo 67 in Montreal. Unfortunately, after practicing landscape architecture for more than sixty years, she died from complications of COVID-19 in May 2021 at the age of 99 in Vancouver.