Perspective view for Children’s Creative Centre Playground, Canadian Federal Pavilion, Expo ’67, Montréal, Québec – Dry transfer on screenprint; Dimensions: comp.: 91 x 114 cm (35 13/16 x 44 7/8 in.); Reference number: ARCH252723; Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal; Gift of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander © Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.
By Elisia Seeber, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
NORTH SHORE NEWS
West Vancouver Art Museum curator Hilary Letwin has long been fascinated and inspired by the work of eminent landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.
Now, she gets to share that passion with the wider community through the museum’s latest exhibition, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Genius Loci. The remarkable 99-year-old, who lives in Vancouver and is still consulting on projects, is among the most notable landscape architects in the world. Over her career, she’s designed landscapes locally, nationally and abroad, and become known for her desire to ”create terrains that are less an interruption and more an amplification of what already exists on a site.”
Hence the name of the exhibition, Genius Loci, meaning ”the protective spirit of a place.”
Oberlander was born into a prominent Jewish family in 1921 in Germany, and later fled the Nazi regime with her mother and sister to create a new life in the United States in 1939. After studying, she relocated to Vancouver in 1953, where she e...