Her husband's professional career was as an architect and as Canada's first professor of Urban and Regional Planning. They moved to Vancouver and had three children. Oberlander began work with Louis Kahn and Oscar Stonorov in Philadelphia and then with landscape architect Dan Kiley in Vermont. Born in Vienna, he also had fled with his family from the Nazis in 1938.

But with the war that changed, and in 1943 I was one of the very first women to be admitted to the Harvard Graduate School of Design.' She met her future husband, Peter Oberlander at a class picnic. In her interview with Jenny Hall she stated, 'When I went to Smith, women who wanted to become landscape architects went to the Cambridge School, a part of Harvard University, because at that time, women could not attend Harvard. In 1944 Oberlander was awarded a BA degree from Smith College and, in 1947, she was among the first class of women awarded degrees in landscape architecture by Harvard. She had come to America with the hopes of exploring the professional educational opportunities that involved the creation of parks and green spaces, and pursued that objective in American colleges. Her mother had a truck farm in New Hampshire during the war, which Oberlander worked on.

They emigrated to the United States in 1939. When Oberlander was 18, being Jewish, her sister, her mother, and she escaped Nazi persecution after the ' Kristallnacht' (Night of Broken Glass) pogrom in 1938 by fleeing to England. From there all my education was directed towards becoming a landscape architect.' When I came home, I told my mother 'I want to make parks'. When I asked the artist about the green spaces in this mural, she told me that these were parks. I studied a mural in the artist's studio showing the river Rhine and an imaginary town. In an interview with Mechtild Manus, tracing the roots of her interests in landscape architecture, Oberlander stated: Since she had a garden bed when she was four years old and planted peas and corn, she knew the joy of growing. She was the niece of educationalist Kurt Hahn, the founder of Schule Schloss Salem in Germany, Gordonstoun in Scotland, and UWC Atlantic College in the UK as well as the niece of Elisabeth Jastrow, the German-born American classical archaeologist.Ī horticulturist who wrote gardening books for children, Beate Hahn fostered in her daughter a deep love and appreciation for nature from a young age. Oberlander was born at Muelheim-Ruhr, Germany, the daughter of Beate (Jastrow) and Franz Hahn. Family and early life Partial view of grounds, Peacekeeping Monument, Ottawa, Canada ĭuring her career she contributed to the designs of many high-profile buildings in both Canada and the United States, including the Robson Square and the Law Courts Complex in Vancouver, the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Chancery in Washington D.C., the Library Square at the Vancouver Public Library, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, and Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly Building in Yellowknife. Her firm, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander Landscape Architects, was founded in 1953, when she moved to Vancouver. (20 June 1921 – ) was a German-born Canadian landscape architect. Peacekeeping Monument, VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitors CenterĬanadian Government Pavilion, Children's Creative Centre and play area for Expo 67 in MontrealĬornelia Hahn Oberlander CC OBC LL.D. Choi Building, Vancouver Public Library, Northwest Territories Legislative Building, Canadian Chancery in Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Robson Square, and Vancouver Law Courts Order of Canada, American Society of Landscape Architects Medal, Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award, Governor General's Medal in Landscape ArchitectureĬornelia Hahn Oberlander Landscape ArchitectsĬ.

Leading landscape architect dies