#AGAlive | Community Tour with Katharina Kafka

2022

Watch our Oct. 7 Community Tour of ‘Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Genius Loci’ with landscape architect Katharina Kafka. ‘Genius Loci” is sponsored by Qualico and presented by the Poole Centre of Design. #AGAlive is made possible by EPCOR and Canada Council for the Arts.Watch our Oct. 7 Community Tour of ‘Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Genius Loci’ with landscape architect Katharina Kafka. ‘Genius Loci” is sponsored by Qualico and presented by the Poole Centre of Design. #AGAlive is made possible by EPCOR and Canada Council for the Arts. …

Key moments

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Land Acknowledgement
Land Acknowledgement
0:11

Land Acknowledgement

0:11

Genius Loci
Genius Loci
4:25

Genius Loci

4:25

Portland Hotel
Portland Hotel
22:23

Portland Hotel

22:23

Tiger Garden at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa
Tiger Garden at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa
23:41

Tiger Garden at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa

23:41

Green Roofs
Green Roofs
35:32

Green Roofs

35:32

Autogenerated Transcript from YouTube (if available)

Use CTRL+F to find key words if it is a longer transcript​.

0:00

hello everyone and welcome to our community tour led by katharina kafka my name is michael manson i’m the public

0:06

program and outreach coordinator at the art gallery of of alberta to start this program i would like to do a land

0:12

acknowledgement i’m currently in treaty six territory in edmonton the traditional land of diverse

0:18

indigenous peoples including the cree blackfoot metis dakota sioux earpod

0:24

zenei inuit and ojibwe salto anishinabe we acknowledge and extend gratitude to

0:30

many first nations metis and inuit whose footsteps have marked these lands for generations and who continue to call

0:37

this place home today this is the sixth edition of our

0:43

community tour program which invites a new speaker each month to lead the tour of the current exhibition giving our

0:49

audience a unique perspective on the artwork on display we are going to be looking at the exhibition cornelia han

0:56

overlander genius loci which is currently on display at her gallery till the 17th so if you haven’t seen it yet

1:03

please check it out because time is running out uh one thing to mention is that we will

1:09

be have one thing to mention is that we will have a chat at the end of this lecture

1:14

and so if you have any questions please enter them in the q a function or you can also use the chat function and if

1:21

you are on facebook please enter them in the chat uh this aga live to me tours made

1:27

possible in part for the support from the heart and soul fund by epcor i would also like to thank the canada council

1:33

for the arts for their supported style now i would like to introduce katharina

1:39

originally from vienna katharina attained a masters of landscape architecture from the university of natural resources and life sciences in

1:46

vienna austria in 2002. katharina has over 15 years of experience as a landscape architect and

1:53

works within the full range of scale from master plans and pocket parks to civic spaces and private yards katharina

2:01

believes the design of a serious space has not only an important impact on a building but is essential to the feel

2:08

and making of place her designs are deeply rooted in their neighborhoods and their natural and

2:13

historic contexts so without further ado please welcome katharina

2:32

so hi everyone good evening and thanks for joining us um today

2:37

um i’m katrina kafka and i’m a landscape architect and i’ve been a landscape architect all my adult life i was born

2:45

and raised in austria and worked in europe a while and then came to canada to add them about 12

2:54

years ago um i first learned about cornelia han over lander um maybe

3:01

like 15 years ago and i was working in ireland at the time and planning a trip to visit an old friend in vancouver

3:08

and a colleague of mine also originally from germany said to me ah you’re going to vancouver you must go and visit

3:15

cornelia and oberlander and i didn’t even know who she was at the time so then i started to do some research uh

3:23

um look up her projects and um i went to vancouver and had a fantastic time in vancouver well i got

3:30

shy and i did not contact her she was also she must have also been in her 80s back

3:36

then time was short um but didn’t matter ever since i felt very

3:42

connected to her and to her work and you know how it is when you put your

3:47

awareness towards something suddenly she popped up everywhere and there was this project that project

3:54

and yeah so i feel very much connected to her and i think not only because of our common

4:00

germanic heritage and finding our homes in canada but also just because of that

4:07

of her work and how excellent her work is and how influential she has been so it’s a great honor um for me to be here

4:14

today and share a bit of my view and thoughts about her work

4:19

so thanks a lot michael for inviting me and having me here

4:24

so this exhibition is called genius loci which is latin for the spirit of place

4:32

that’s actually a really beautiful underlying principle of landscape architecture and

4:39

i suppose also architecture and it means like to

4:44

read the spirit of the place and that every place is unique every project is unique every site

4:50

and so um there is obviously the site location just a fauna there’s a

4:56

floor there’s a topography there’s usage there’s history and all of that

5:02

forms a certain ambience a certain spirit um that touches us

5:07

and moves us and can inspire us so i think that’s been a really underlying principle to her work that um she really

5:15

worked with the land and the place and its uniqueness and um you will as we walk through as we

5:23

walk through the exhibition now i think we will see that in a lot of her work

5:28

um just um quickly before i just wanted to touch on her biography

5:34

i think many of you will know that cornelia was born in germany in 1921

5:40

into i think rather intellectual open-minded

5:46

jewish family her father was an engineer and her mother was a horticultural horticulturist

5:52

so from very early age cornelia was exposed to gardening to botany the importance from plants

6:00

and i think at the age 11 she already decided that she would like to become a landscape architect

6:07

um and obviously she also grew up in the times of the bauhaus and the beginnings

6:13

of modern architecture and design and i think that really influenced her for the

6:18

rest of her life as well then in 1938 her father tragically passed away in an

6:25

avalanche and then her mother resisted her um fled the nazi government and

6:30

immigrated to the united states in 1938 and she then um moved on to

6:39

smith college and studied a combined course landscape architecture and architecture

6:46

and from then on she went to harvard and she was one of the first women

6:51

admitted to harvard school of design and that was led at the time by walter gropius so here again she landed in them

6:59

in the center of the bauhaus movement and modernism and

7:05

collaboration and studio and really an overall perspective on

7:12

buildings and sites and planets i want to go to her first and then she

7:18

graduated in 1947 from harvard and she started working in

7:24

the social housing sector she started to work for a landscape or he like then kylie and it was um just after the war

7:30

and so housing was in big demand in philadelphia and this is just a sketch

7:37

but it immediately is a beautiful like in my in my view it’s a beautiful painting because it’s all one

7:45

um it’s like there’s not the buildings and then there’s the landscape architecture or the site or the planting

7:52

it really stands out as one composition and throughout her whole life i think

7:57

that was another underlying principle of hers she used to say

8:02

um building and landscape must achieve a fit so they have to go together and that

8:09

starts with collaboration with a strong concept to

8:15

the grading plan and um so this was a large housing

8:20

project these um these these buildings here are actually i think 17 16 story high apartment

8:28

buildings and these are more like mid-rise um

8:34

dance housing units and um just looking at the sketch i can

8:39

immediately see like a hierarchy of planting like nestling the building in between the trees you can also see a

8:46

large common space so common areas um also kind of

8:52

semi-private areas that she had here all her they had vegetable gardens they

9:00

had small play areas in there you can also see the geometric the very rectangular shapes of the buildings and

9:07

then she has like just hinted here typical oval of kind of like to have

9:12

this touch of modern landscape architecture in here lots of pedestrian connections

9:18

and first i thought these things here are hedges but then i read that she actually repurposed

9:25

the masonry of buildings that used to stand on the site and created little walls to delineate

9:32

her her landscape and her semi-private areas and i think that’s a beautiful example

9:38

of how um kind of stay true to the genius loci of the place and repurpose something and

9:44

keep it and um yeah let that live the next housing this is a housing this

9:51

is another housing project in um philadelphia and this i think this was six city blocks like huge

9:58

um she also worked with stamped highly and you can see here in orange you’ll notice that when walking the exhibition

10:05

this is actually specifications and i never questioned specifications that was always kind of part of what we

10:11

do in our job but actually at the time they were just the first times people

10:16

wrote specifications for landscape architectural jobs and these were the first specifications she ever wrote

10:24

um as i move forward you can also see like it’s a bit blurry but one can tell like

10:30

her very analytical thinking she has a high not in her plant list not only does she have trees and shrubs and crown

10:38

covers but she also deserves between trees and small trees and she uses them and she again has kind

10:44

of like community spaces and then it’s hard to tell but i think every ground floor unit

10:50

has its own kind of open space so very kind of social responsible

10:56

planning i think both mill creek and these this housing project choco falls have only

11:03

been poorly realized and they have also been demolished

11:08

um then that was something that really amazed me when i walked through the exhibition i

11:14

mostly knew republic like kind of a public space project but i wasn’t aware of her playground design and how many

11:20

playgrounds she did and what she did so she had the opportunity to design a playground for a vacant lot

11:27

in philadelphia as well um and um

11:32

she did she did a beautiful side analysis um i think typical to her and thinking of the time but she also really

11:40

looked at the demographic and who lives in the neighborhood and what age the children are and what it

11:46

would like to do and she really um already at that playground started to

11:53

design her own equipment and her own ways and she really inspired imaginary play

12:00

so this is the only thing i found dated in the exhibition is display equipment

12:05

but other than that it’s amazingly contemporary um so if i zoom in here you can see she

12:12

designed a little mountain out of concrete using them using

12:17

concrete as you can see in a picture and that’s just like really inspiring because it allows for so much creative

12:24

use you can climb up you can obviously run around every step could become something different it’s seating it’s

12:30

play she also differentiated into a smaller children’s play area then all the

12:37

children’s play area and then she allowed for a lot of sports so you can read here basketball and volleyball and

12:45

body ball and all injured planted and some seating areas here she also repurposed equipment

12:52

so she really wanted to design a place a human community place for everyone i think

12:58

and move away from um very playground equipment oriented

13:04

play and that became even much bigger in this project of course

13:10

so she got invited to design um a playground for expo 67 for the children’s creative

13:18

center and so expo 67 i think was in this period of of

13:24

kind of like an utopia living and moving a little bit away from the

13:29

automobile um dictated cities and she got invited to kind of design

13:35

the most progressive playground with the most progressive play equipment at the time

13:41

and what cornelius did is she designed a player curve but she designed

13:46

basically a natural playground and i don’t know how many of you are

13:52

kind of have children or familiar with education trends at the moment but national playgrounds i think that’s

13:58

really really really big at the moment and i was amazed to see her do it in 1964 when she designed it for the expo

14:05

1967. so instead of typical play equipment she has heels she has logs she has even a

14:15

kind of stream area running around here she has resting areas she has loose play

14:22

equipment um where things can act where kids can actually build their own houses and

14:27

structures and move things around and she also has a lot of planting trees she

14:34

knew that this playground is going to be mainly used for urban kids children growing up in cities and

14:40

she really wanted to introduce also kind of a natural growing nature

14:46

learning into these playgrounds and um she never saw it was never i think her playground for her was never

14:52

just to add items of a catalogue it was really to create a space and an environment

15:00

and have something for everyone and tell the story and um

15:07

it’s very beautiful in my opinion very beautiful um just the drawings almost a piece of art

15:14

it became highly successful um they had to apparently i think they have to limit the times uh to one hour of each kid’s

15:21

staying before the ushered them out and she moved on to design 70 playgrounds

15:27

all over canada after that and so yeah here you can see this

15:32

beautiful sketches beautiful perspective she did there’s an embankment slide i mean this is now very common in every

15:39

playground a log tunnel um you have very highly creative play

15:47

um so for a long time um nature playgrounds or natural

15:53

not natural materials weren’t allowed the city of edmonton didn’t allow that for um for the playgrounds here also because

16:00

in the past they have been treated with kerosene or had splinters but maybe some of you know just like last

16:05

year they built the first natural playground in in the city of edmond river valley by the zoo

16:12

and it’s a highly successful project a very beautiful playground and um so i think we’ll just see many

16:17

more of these come in that in the near future this is in in 1953 cornelia

16:24

married her husband uh peter oberlander who was a planner and architect at ubc

16:30

and she moved us into vancouver and this is a project this is not a housing project she did in vancouver called

16:36

skinner terrace and this one is still um is still here today

16:41

still lived in and even just this sketch again it shows a nice it’s just just such a nice composition of of the

16:48

buildings here that that the green space is in between how she uses for instance

16:54

lines of trees to to create a little bit more of a quieted kind of semi-private

16:59

space here now other spaces are much more open and there’s also playgrounds in

17:05

here a strong hierarchy like it all is like in this one um

17:11

buildings and site private gardens and private estates so

17:16

over the course of her lifetime and work she has some

17:22

built many um private estates and i think in the private estates you

17:27

can really also see her like everything comes together she usually worked with well-renowned architects and mid-century

17:35

modern buildings and she could use her incredible plant knowledge and botany

17:40

she used she really also in the very beginning mainly used native plants and maybe a few exotic plants and planters

17:48

just as a point and um yeah a lot of her

17:53

kind of design almost poetic design work is apparent i find in her private states

18:00

so this is for instance a sketch for the friedman um estate which you did in the 50s

18:06

and um yeah i can see this area here that’s a little bit shaped like a butterfly

18:13

it says lawn on it and i think it later must have turned into gravel

18:18

so i learned that there was bedrock underneath and she didn’t want out and so nothing would grow on that but she really didn’t

18:25

want to bust out the bedrock because it’s beautiful to have bedrocks there and so she’s just maybe working the design and had nothing planted here but

18:33

then had her amazing shrub beds around here and i love how she has this very

18:38

rectangular straight clean lines edges pathways around the building to match

18:44

the building and then she slowly starts to fade it out into the gravel space

18:50

and then into her planting like i did like this like this paver suddenly fading out this is such a common detail

18:58

now we see it in every high-end pavers catalog and she did it in the 50s

19:04

also one can see a little bit in the legend here you know she how 3d how spatial her thinking was she

19:10

didn’t really i think plan that this is this plan and this but she went in masses

19:15

like these are the shrubs at dad height and these are the shrubs that 16 inches and then there’s the next layer of shrub

19:21

some very layered approach of thinking this is another resident she did a much

19:28

later in her life ratman residence um later got expanded so this here was the

19:35

original plan and i think the main road

19:40

runs here and this was the entrance to the house or house um estate

19:47

and then she designed this beautiful succession of gardens like you can see here this is

19:53

very formal very rectangular i think it’s probably hard surface

19:58

and then it steps down to a much softer but still geometric kind of ellipse

20:04

sweet probably lawn area towards the road she has

20:09

a row of small trees but i love the imbalance she doesn’t have it on the other side there’s more steps

20:15

and then here it becomes very natural a birch grove and so it becomes from very

20:20

formal to more and more and more natural to a walk through the forest

20:25

it’s just a beautiful concept channel this is really really strong concept that she always forwards through

20:32

well her famous projects through then later she got commissioned to add an extension

20:38

and so this is confusing because this line of the house here is the garage here

20:44

is actually that line of the house and the garage here but what you can see

20:49

as she got more space to expand here she pulled the roadway

20:55

or the driveway away from the building it was switching to the garage and suddenly could add a much more of a

21:02

purple and landscape setting here and then continued with her oval theme it’s a very beautiful conceptual

21:09

approach um okay

21:15

trying to get to the next slide yeah so this is um monteverdia states these are

21:20

20 homes it’s a residential project nestled on a slope is used to the ocean

21:26

i think in vancouver you can see how beautiful she designed this curving road and it’s an old growth

21:32

i think it’s in an old growth forest how she kind of weave the pathway

21:37

through the forest and then all the buildings are set close to the road as to minimize uh disturbance and i

21:45

think they also found a lot of bad rock um in between the buildings and they didn’t remove it and they left it as much

21:51

elimination and i find it also quite poetic that her road that mirrors and becomes a pathway

21:59

through the woods i think this is a project she did with arthur erickson and arthur erickson and cornelia han i

22:06

think spent 35 years designing together they were a really good match i did many

22:12

many many many projects together so then my next slide oh and this is a

22:19

very different kind of project she did a little bit later in 2000 it’s called portland hotel

22:25

that is a housing project for people who are heart house um

22:30

recovering drug addicts people experience trauma so unless i think this is one of the

22:36

projects where you simply wanted to create a an oasis a healing garden introduced a

22:42

lot of planting um i think she has a waterfall

22:47

to have the noise soften create this quiet voice its meditative

22:53

speed space and as you can see here in her sketches she just

22:58

she looks at it for some sections i find that where she has this strong straight plantar bed she has even a vegetable

23:05

garden recognizing the healing nature of planting and growing your own food and

23:11

it’s all very erected lingular and then she has this beautiful weaving screamed through it

23:16

this is one of her later projects the way she approaches it we sketch and axonometry something it just shows

23:23

how thorough um her work is

23:29

so now this is a very very different scale of projects um kind of as an example of her more

23:36

large-scale public projects this is her um tiger garden at the national gallery of

23:43

canada in ottawa and i find that very revolutionary because um you would like for my kind of

23:51

capital um kind of formal kind of national gallery i would expect

23:58

some formally cut lawns some tulips some flowers

24:03

and she went and she wanted to install the landscape and she wanted to do something she wanted to complete an

24:09

environment and she wanted to showcase the canadian north in fact she became inspired by a building about a painting

24:18

perforate that is hanging inside the gallery um by

24:24

jackson of the group of seven that depicts the canadian north and so she wanted for everyone to have

24:31

access to canadian norse and luckily they also found rock at early excavations so she

24:37

designed this beautiful um kind of rock garden with native plants

24:44

of the canadian norse with stogwoods with pines with irises

24:50

um and it’s also south facing so there’s an empty future and people can in these

24:57

pathways here meander through this landscape of the north and this is

25:04

a plaza here that’s a very strong project in my opinion and it also it also started or is the

25:11

start kind of a slow start of the where she really used she called it ethno-botanical planting so she really

25:18

wanted to be rather than collecting plants from all over she really wanted to depict landscapes but also very

25:24

strong in the museum of anthropology um this is the northwestern territories

25:31

legislative assemble in yellowknife and there she took um this creating a

25:37

landscape even further um at least at the time there was no nursery in yellowknife and she also was

25:44

very clear that um she can’t just plant some ornamental plants up there and that

25:50

you really really wanted all she wanted to do is restore the scars of the construction

25:56

and the impact of construction as to set this building it sits it sits just outside of yellowknife on a beautiful

26:02

lake and it looks like it’s always been sitting there it’s like it’s so beautifully embedded in the landscape

26:08

and that’s because she just mended the scars what she actually did she asked um a

26:14

botanist and seed collector to come with her and they collected the seeds

26:20

of the plants in the surrounding areas and little plugs and took them back to a

26:26

greenhouse in vancouver and then for two years propagated the plants and then brought them back and then

26:32

wherever there was turnover and scars of construction in the rocks they planted

26:38

um those um plants back again and that’s what this project is really famous for

26:44

among landscape architects um in addition um

26:50

she also always um i think connected connectivity to the creator surroundings

26:56

um you can see here she worked very sorry she um she looked at viewpoints at

27:02

connectivity there’s a boardwalk over this lake i think to connect integrated

27:07

trail system but she she had these sore side analysis that are really inspiring

27:13

you know where viewpoints were possible resting points here hierarchy of

27:18

pathways um and also winter like how is that

27:23

going to work in winter what are the winter effects um what can we do to make this beautiful and livable and usable in

27:29

winter and that was in the early 90s and we all know that um like the impact of winter

27:35

and just the city of edmonton about five years ago published i think a winter design guidelines one is a great um

27:42

document just to have this winter awareness she did it in the 90s so very inspiring very much pushing the

27:50

status quo again in the late 80s she read the brown plant

27:59

report and that was one of the first reports um commissioned by uh

28:06

um kind of like it was one of the worst environment first environmental reports that very very very clearly stated globe

28:14

threats of global warming change of the environment and the impact that that will have on mankind

28:20

and she read it in the late 80s and it really resonated with her and she immediately changed her design practice

28:26

and she devoted i think the rest of her career maybe the 90s and

28:32

2000s um to um as much as she can to environmental

28:38

sustainable flagship projects and one of those is the vancouver public

28:43

library roof i mean this one like we are now we all love green roofs we all talk about them

28:50

they still very rarely get built but um um this one was built in 1995 i think um

28:58

she wanted to have that rooftop accessible she believed in accessible landscapes so people can use nature that

29:05

didn’t happen here but she nevertheless came up with a beautiful design

29:11

um and the blue fescue in the middle they depict the fraser river

29:16

and the the green grass is the land and the kinnick in the ground cover the

29:22

mountains and because it was one of the first green rules they studied it and actually

29:29

only 28 of the rain water that’s landing on the roof is going into the storm water

29:36

system so it’s also in very environmentally successful later she went on to even design

29:42

buildings that don’t connect to the sewer system so the last project that i wanted to

29:50

mention today is a very relatively recent project three east

29:56

schools which is a school high up in innovec and i think it just um combines many of

30:04

these underlying principles that that characterizes her work

30:10

um again because it’s so high up north they went and they collected the seeds the plugs

30:17

they propagated it there was a lot of collaboration with the architects

30:22

in positioning the building and having itself facing in mitigating the winds

30:29

and the design she designed shelter belts that are not just planted on the grid but they are planted in groups as to

30:36

mitigate the winds and this school is really like many um

30:41

schools in indigenous communities it’s really a community building it’s there to be used by the community after hours

30:48

um there was also a lot of yeah so um it has a playground

30:54

that is made solely here’s the playground and the kindergarten area that is made solely

30:59

out of driftwood so due to her principle of no-play equipment other than

31:05

natural ones on a playground and then she has a beautiful kind of simple circular area here for um

31:14

for indigenous games and ceremonies and a lot of shells are bad planting

31:21

and i think they come and also she got very much inspired by berry picking so most of the plugs and

31:28

most of the shrubs that are planted are actually edible because it’s also something she really advocated for and she was very aware

31:34

that especially us all living in northern cities that food security will become a major topic in the future

31:43

and as we all know like the farther north you go they’re more impacted by climate

31:49

change so permafrost isn’t as permanent anymore and so it also um i think really

31:56

showcases her environmental stewardship um thank you very much for listening and

32:02

being with me this evening afternoon

32:10

hi sorry i just need to unmute myself thank you so much for uh your lecture kathrina that was uh really amazing

32:17

we’re gonna head into the q a portion and before we do that i

32:22

just want to say thank you to the alberta association of landscape architects and in particular todd reed

32:28

who has connected us so that’s one of the reasons why catherine is here is because um we decided to collaborate on

32:36

this program together so thanks again to that organization so if you have any questions please

32:41

enter the questions in the chat or on facebook and so basically since while we wait for

32:49

people to put some questions in i’m gonna ask a question and my question is a little bit about uh

32:57

cornelia’s legacy something i noticed during your lecture is that so many of these older projects

33:03

from 60s and even from the 70s and 90s uh they still seem really relevant and

33:09

new can you speak a little bit about her legacy

33:15

yeah it’s something it’s something that really amazed myself like how other than maybe this one’s playground sculpture

33:21

how contemporary her work is and i think it’s i think a lot it goes back to

33:27

genius lucy loki to really really read the place to

33:33

really have a server-side analysis to really be aware of the needs and use

33:38

relative simple forms and i think in general her approach that form follows function

33:46

rather than the ornamental borders um it’s really the function first and i

33:52

think that’s been highly highly successful and also i i think she must have been a very tenacious person i

33:58

think she kept pushing she didn’t give up she didn’t settle she advocated and

34:03

advocated and really was able to to push the boundaries and so much is possible

34:10

and i think that’s something that for me i want to take away that to not give up too quickly

34:17

push and to push especially on a sustainable and environmental um

34:22

and in because we all know we are running out of time so if if we don’t take the most environmental approach we

34:28

can take now when are we going to do it yeah definitely uh i have a question from carla

34:35

and the question is what’s the name of the report that inspired cornea to build the vancouver library group

34:42

okay hold on one second i wrote it down um it’s called where do i have it because i have

34:49

a messy it’s called brunch brand land in b-r-u-n-d-l-a-n-d-t

34:59

brunt land report and its title is our common future

35:05

and it was a report of the world commission on environment and development a global agenda for change

35:13

and i think that fell in time with the first um world climate um

35:21

uh summits that’s very interesting um

35:26

that kind of that leads me to another question you briefly and this might be an aside but you

35:32

mentioned green roofs and we showed uh the green roof uh that cornelia made and you said something like

35:38

the fact that they’re they don’t get built very often i was just really curious if you could expand upon that a little bit about

35:46

green roofs because that was something that was really intriguing to me when i saw that

35:52

um in my opinion there’s only two points that speak ever against green roofs and that’s maintenance and cost

35:59

and unfortunately i mean a lot and also very understandably a lot of our development is cost driven

36:06

and then also um landscape has this unfortunate element that it’s last in the timeline

36:13

um so it comes at the end of a project and it’s very tempting when you run over budget or on very close to budget to cut

36:20

landscape or a green roof it’s just one of those things that um uh like i’ve seen it like they get

36:27

really built about above arcades that’s a very common application

36:32

but there’s so much so much more we could do and i think we would all love to see it it’s just a matter of

36:37

prioritizing it i think yeah definitely yeah because one of the things that we were

36:43

chatting about is like climate change and climate change being such a major issue so

36:48

uh speaking from your perspective as a landscape architect like is that is that the number one issue

36:55

that people are speaking about or what are the issues in in this field that people are confronted with

37:02

uh you mean like roof talks to double or no just just in general just um because

37:08

we were just talking a little bit about climate change and i’m just curious from your perspective

37:14

is that one of the major issues well i think it’s an is it’s it’s a it’s

37:20

an issue that gives the profession a lot of the profession of landscape architects more weight

37:25

um it also might push it a little bit more into the greenery field i think what i

37:31

hear the conversation that i hear a lot among landscape architects particularly in alberta as

37:37

an element of recognition it’s not a very it’s not a you know of course as a landscape

37:44

architect my opinion major development should be run by landscape architects and employee architects and planners but

37:52

it’s the overarching it’s like actually the overarching tying several things together it’s usually the other rounds

37:58

um i think at busier cities like vancouver montreal they have embraced um

38:06

the public spaces the public realm um yeah i guess i’m talking about the

38:11

public space much more um but it’s also um it’s a beautiful side effect i’m seeing

38:18

through the pandemic but caused by the pandemic that people embrace the outdoors they embrace our river valley

38:24

they embrace the parks every picnic table is taken every picnic table seems sight seems full

38:30

and we you know i think we used to meet in our little homesteads in our little yards and now there is

38:37

a nice embracing of public outer space yeah that’s very cool um

38:43

i’m just wanna oh there’s another question from carla

38:48

and i’ll just read it out this might take me a little bit of time i think it’s very interesting to see how cornelia seemed to be seem to

38:55

demonstrate so much faith in her forward thinking ideas around natural play places and also green roofing and i

39:02

wonder if there’s any specific way if you know that she went about advocating for these uh cutting edge ideas it must

39:09

have been difficult to change people’s existing ideas do you have any comments about that

39:18

that’s a very good question um i don’t know i’m just drawing an

39:25

assumption here that she was very well known and very well connected and she

39:33

worked with excellent architects who understood her and i think uh in that case she

39:40

like for instance i think that’s why her collaboration with arthur erickson was very successful and so when you have then your architect

39:47

on board and then you have like then then there’s again more weight um how she convinced people for the expo

39:55

i’m not so sure um and she also used a lot of um science to back her up like for

40:02

instance i heard that um she did a building with renzo piano the new york times um courtyard and i just heard that

40:10

um when the piano wanted to have birch trees all over the courtyard and cornelius said you can’t do that because

40:17

they will only grow in one certain section well it’s very hard to just say to renzo piano you can’t do that

40:24

so what she did she commissioned a microclimate study and then she had to study

40:30

to really show look that’s where the daylight falls in in there there’s no daylight in your courtyard anymore if

40:37

it’s like high-rise surrounding and so she made it very clear um i think she

40:42

backed up her thinking like this is an example that comes to my mind um

40:48

yeah that’s not playground specific but and i think she was yeah she i think she

40:53

didn’t hold back to really really make her cause yeah from my understanding it seems like

41:00

she was always uh really headstrong with with

41:08

yeah okay so i’m just going to give it another minute for any questions um

41:15

hold on don’t turn the light on okay fair enough

41:21

yeah this has uh been really nice to learn more about this uh this exhibition

41:27

and uh landscape architects sure from your perspective i’m also i’ll just have

41:32

one more question i’m curious about just like we’re we’re seeing all these drawings i don’t know

41:38

very much about them but i can see there is a big shift from hand-drawn works to

41:43

more digital work like is can you talk a little bit about like the technology

41:48

that cornelia was using in the in her later projects is this technology that architects still use today

41:57

it isn’t that it is not like um you can see in her earlier project she she used a lot of sections she cut through it she

42:04

used sections to draw it was hand-drawn um later on it was um uh archicad like

42:10

um autocad like drawn on the computer and nowadays i think the move is really towards um

42:16

build like bim modeling building and landscape integrated systems where you

42:21

you don’t draw lines and there are a wall you actually draw a wall and you give this wall um character and um

42:29

parameters and everything is automatically in 3d uh that’s a little bit more difficult

42:34

with landscape and that’s also the beauty of it because it’s not as as like it grows there’s a fourth

42:41

dimension to it it’s not as as quantable as furniture or architecture but

42:47

i think people want to see things in 3d and that’s the easiest way nevertheless if

42:53

if um you can generate like a certain view in 3d and then you would photoshop

42:59

over it but what i see is a beautiful hand-drawn sketch or perspective can go a very very

43:07

long way and sometimes what i find if i draw if i personally in my practice draw something

43:13

very quickly on the computer it is easily perceived as that’s it that’s how it’s going to look

43:20

and if you use a hand sketch it leaves open like it’s very clear this is weird

43:25

this is conceptual this is schematic please give me your input so there’s a

43:30

little bit of a beauty in there too okay well that’s very cool wow do you have anything uh any last-minute

43:37

words you would like to say before we say good evening and goodbye yes i want to thank you for putting on

43:44

the exhibition because i think it’s just one of the many great ways to bring landscape architecture in general

43:52

um to a greater public and i think that’s wonderful so um thank you

43:59

okay well thank you again for your presentation uh and thank you to everyone in the audience for listening

44:05

it’s been truly wonderful so i hope everyone has a nice evening goodbye for now

44:10

bye bye

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