Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds

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Part of

• Fonds: Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds, 1936-2021

People

• Cornelia Hahn Oberlander (archive creator)

Title

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds

Dates of creation

1936-2021

Form

• archives

Level of archival description

Fonds

Extent and Medium

• 26.71 l.m. of textual records
• Approximately 18 688 photographic materials
• 9697 drawings (including reprographic copies)
• 7266 digital files (42.12 GB)
• 48 artefacts
• 35 panels
• 24 sound recordings
• 22 books
• 11 serials
• 10 moving images
• 2 graphic materials
• 1 model

Scope and Content

The Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds documents Oberlander's professional activities as a landscape architect. It contains over 215 projects that span from 1950 to 2018 predominantly in Canada and in the United States, but also in Germany. The fonds is a complete record of Oberlander's work, and comprises her playground projects, roof gardens, and public space landscapes, as well as landscape designs for private residences. The fonds also includes adminstrative records from her practice and her professionnal engagements, and research material for her landscaping projects, publications, and lectures. The fonds includes material related to Cornelia Hahn Oberlander's participation on exhibitions of her own work, such as the exhibition "Art and Design Canada 2000" at the Royal Academy of Art in 1994, and the exhibition "Out of the Century" at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1999.

The fonds chiefly contains material related to Oberlander's landscape projects such as conceptual drawings, design development drawings, presentation drawings, and working drawings, which includes original drawings by Oberlander. Project related material also includes textual records and photographs. Oberlander's archive also comprises office records from Oberlander's practice, reference and research material such as small publications and press clippings on playgrounds and drawings and notes from her studies at Smith College and in landscape architecture at Harvard University.

Reference Number

AP075

Arrangement

The fonds is arranged in four series:

AP075.S1 Landscape architecture projects

AP075.S2 Exhibitions

AP075.S3 Professional activities and office records

AP075.S4 Reference and research material

Biographical notes

Cornelia Hahn (b. June 20, 1921, Mulheim, Germany; d. May 22, 2021, Vancouver, British Columbia) was the daughter of Beate Hahn (born Jastrow), author of gardening books for children, and Franz Hahn, an engineer. He died in an avalanche while skiing in Switzerland in 1933. Six years later, in 1939, Cornelia Hahn fled Berlin with her mother and her sister, Charlotte Hahn, to escape Nazi Germany because of their Jewish background. They settled first in New York City, then near Wolfboro, New Hampshire, USA. Cornelia Hahn attended Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts from 1941–44 before studying under Walter Gropius at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. She graduated in 1947 and became one of first graduate of the School with her degree in Landscape Architecture. In 1950, Oberlander was hired as a community planner with the Citizen's Council on City Planning (CCCP) in Philadelphia, an organization whose goal what to facilitate the participation of citizens in the urban planning process by “[acting] an intermediary between the Planning Commission [of the City of Philadelphia] and the community groups.” [1] Oberlander worked with landscape architect Dan Kiley for projects in Vermont and in Philadelphia from 1951–53. She also worked in the same period for landscape architect James Rose on social housing developments as well as with architects Louis Kahn, and Oskar Stonorov (sometimes spelled as "Oscar"). In 1953, she married fellow Harvard graduate H. Peter Oberlander (1922-2008), and they would go on to have three children. The couple moved to Vancouver where Cornelia Hahn Oberlander started her own practice as a landscape architect while her husband was charged with founding the Community and Regional Planning Department at the University of British Columbia (UBC). After visiting Jerusalem in 1962 to participate to the International Federation of Landscape Architects, Oberlander and her husband began a long-standing collaboration with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus. “Cornelia Oberlander also assisted with the development of the university's botanical garden, as well as joining a team of planners who helped the community of Ashkalon accommodate settlers from North Africa and Georgia, which was then part of the Soviet Union.”[2]

Until the early 1970s, Oberlander primarily designed children’s playgrounds, private residential gardens, and landscaping for social housing projects such as MacLean Park and Skeena Terrace in Vancouver (1957). The family temporarily moves to Ottawa for two years in 1972 where Oberlander continued her own landscape architecture practice while her husband served in the Federal Ministry of State for Urban Affairs. As they return to Vancouver in 1974, Oberlander was invited by architect Arthur Erickson to contribute to the planning of the Robson Square and the Provincial Courthouse complex in Vancouver (1979). Further collaborations with Erickson and others on important public buildings soon followed. She worked on many of Erickson's most renowned projects, such as the Museum of Anthropology at UBC (1976), the Canadian Chancery in Washington, D.C. (1989), California Plaza in Los Angeles (1989), and the Liu Centre for Global Relations at UBC (1998). Oberlander also worked with architect Moshe Safdie on the Taiga (Arctic) Garden for the National Gallery of Canada (1989), landscaping for the Ottawa City Hall addition (1991), and the roof garden and plazas for the Vancouver Public Library (1995). Projects Oberlander worked on in the 1990s included the United Nations Peacekeeping Monument in Ottawa, with architect Richard Henriquez and sculptor Jack Harmon, and landscaping for the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly Building, Yellowknife (Matsuzaki / Wright Architects, 1991–94). She also worked on the ecologically innovative C.K. Choi Institute of Asian Research at UBC (Matsuzaki / Wright Architects, 1996), a project that committed Hahn Oberlander to environmental planning and sustainable development in urban contexts, as well as the landscape masterplan for Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts (Rolland/Towers, 1997). Major projects completed in the 2000s include Liu Centre for International Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Architectura/Arthur Erickson Architects, 2000), Jim Everett Memorial Park, University Endowment Lands, Vancouver, British Columbia (2001)¸ Holly Park III, Seattle, Washington (Solomon ETC Architects, 2005) a mixed-income housing community on 36 acres with central park, and the courtyard gardens and roof gardens for the Canadian Embassy, Berlin, Germany (Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, 2005).

Oberlander was awarded the Order of Canada in 1990, to be promoted to Companion of the Order in 2018. Many of Oberlander's projects have been highlighted in exhibitions, including exhibition "Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Ecological Landscapes" at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in 2006. A catalogue with photographs by Etta Gerdes accompanied the exhibition, Bilder kanadischer Landschaftsarchitektur/ Picturing Landscape Architecture, edited by Mechtild Manus and Lisa Rochon and published by the Goethe-Institut (Montréal) and Callwey, Munich.

Source:

[1] Herrington, Susan. Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape, University of Virginia Press, 2014, 304 pages, p. 40

[2] Berger, Kyle, “Honors for Oberlanders”, Jewish Independent, February 13, 2004, https://web.archive.org/web/20060203071144/http://jewishbulletin.ca/Archives/Feb04/archives04Feb13-01.html

Conditions governing access

• Digital material can only be accessed on-site. Please contact Reference at ref@cca.qc.ca for more information. Access by appointment only. Audiovisual recordings must be digitized for access. Researchers may request access by contacting Reference at ref@cca.qc.ca. Please note that some recordings in this file have already been digitized. Researchers may access digitized audiovisual recordings by contacting Reference at ref@cca.qc.ca. Please see item-level records for more detailed information. Access by appointment only.

Conditions governing reproduction

• Contact the CCA for copyright information and permission to reproduce (reproductions@cca.qc.ca).

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

• Gift of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.

Custodial history

The Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds was acquired from Cornelia Hahn Oberlander by the CCA in 1997. The material was transferred in several additions between 1996 and 2019 from Oberlander's residence and office. Final additions were made in 2021 and 2022 by Oberlander's children on her behalf.

Archivist's note

• The Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds was arranged and described in various phases between 2002 and 2012. From March to September 2018, the finding aid was updated, and processing was completed by Catherine Jacob. Both final additions of 2021 and 2022 were processed by Catherine Jacob in 2024. During the 2024 processing, some descriptions were modified in the context of the Reparative description process at the CCA. This process consists of evaluating finding aids and identifying harmful or outdated terms, or descriptions that lack important contextual information, and revise them to be more inclusive and ethical. This fonds' finding aid was changed to add more context about the architectural projects and identify by name as many collaborators, clients, and initiators as possible, to acknowledge their contribution or help think more critically about the project’s background. Changes made also attempted to bring attention to the impact on the communities where projects were planned and built, with a special focus on historically and systemically marginalized groups. This addition also aimed to explain what happened to the projects once realized, particularly for housing projects developed from government policies. The revisions were also an occasion to add more information about the Indigenous communities whose lands some projects are on and how later projects in Oberlander’s career aimed to involve them in the planning phases. And lastly, changes were made to mention the environmental impact of projects as well as Oberlander’s environmentalist efforts. The previous version of the finding aid before these changes were made is available on request. Contact Reference at ref@cca.qc.ca.

Credit line

When citing the collection as a whole, use the citation:
Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds
Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal;
Don de Cornelia Hahn Oberlander/
Gift of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander
When citing specific collection material, please refer to the object’s specific credit line.

Language of material

English, with some material in German and Hebrew.

Related units of description

• Cornelia Hahn Oberlander often worked on landscape projects related to buildings designed by Arthur Erickson. See the Arthur Erickson fonds (AP022) in the CCA's collection for more records related to these projects.