Introduction

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okay hello everyone and welcome to the our curator’s tour led by amory cavelli my name is michael magnussen i am the

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new public program and outreach coordinator at the art gallery of alberta to start this program i would

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like to do a land acknowledgement the aga is located in treaty 6 territory in edmonton the traditional land of diverse

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indigenous peoples including the cree blackfoot metis nakotosu iroquois

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

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

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this place home today we are very happy that you have joined us for this virtual tour of exhibition

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cornelia han overlander gina siloci led by curator americavelli presented by the

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pool center of design at the art gallery of alberta just so you know

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we have amory here so they’re going to be available for a q a so please put your questions in the q a function in

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zoom or if you are watching from facebook you can write your questions in the chat

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this aga live is made possible in part through support from the heart and soul fund by epcor

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and i would also like to thank the canada council for the arts and the pool center of design

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okay now i’m going to introduce americabelli contributes through her

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work to improving public’s relationships with architecture and design since 2018 as the junk curator of the pool center

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of design at the art gallery of alberta she has curated and co-curated exhibitions including cul-de-sac from

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here convenient place another landscape show and nest for the end of the world

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so without further delay i would like to bring out amory [Music]

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thank you michael nice to be here tonight and hello everyone i’m emory calvelli i’m the adjunct curator of

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design at the pool center of design at the art gallery of alberta and really delighted to

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share the cornelia han overlander genius loci exhibition with you tonight

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as michael mentioned we’re going to start with a video and then we’ll have some q a afterwards so i’ll catch you on

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the other side of the video thanks very much michael it’s all yours

About the exhibition

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hello i’m aimee cavelli i’m the adjunct curator at the poole center of design at

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the art gallery of alberta um i’m here today to say a few words about the cornelia han overlander show

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genius local genius lokai just for those that may may not know the

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term is is really uh describing the spirit of a place uh it is thinking more contextually uh

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bringing in emotional connections to a place uh really thinking about uh the experience of the lived the lived

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experience of a place uh cornelia han oberlander was born in

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1921 in germany uh june of 1921. she nearly made 100 years

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um she uh moved to the u.s in the in the 40s and went to school both at smith

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college and then at the harvard school of uh design the graduate harvard graduate school of design in landscape

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architecture she got a degree and was actually one of the early landscape architecture degrees of from a female

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from as a woman she then in the 1950s started working in community planning in philadelphia and

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then uh moved in 1953 with her um husband peter overlander who

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she met at uh harvard and they moved to vancouver and so for the next 60 years

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uh cornelia’s career took place in canada in vancouver and

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in 2016 she was given awarded the inaugural governor general’s award for

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landscape architecture and la this year in 2021 a uh

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international landscape prize will be named in her name the cornelia han

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oberlander international prize the first recipient will be announced this fall and will be a biennial prize

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for a landscape architect similar to how the pritzker runs for architecture

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this exhibition started at it’s co-curated by myself and dr hillary

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lutwin from the west vancouver art museum uh the exhibition started in january at

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the west vancouver art museum and has been installed here in the spring and we’re excited that it’s open

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and it will run through october 17th and then we’re also really pleased to announce that this show will be

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traveling both to winnipeg in the fall and then in january to toronto and so it

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will there’ll be some places to see it i wanted to just briefly read

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something that um cornelia had received a letter from her grandmother as she was

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leaving germany in 1938 and um this is something that in cornelia’s um

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in discussions with her and also in interviews um she had said it really resonated with

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her and carried some strong and some strong resonance throughout her life

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and the phrase the part of the letter says you have to bring beauty into everything

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and the new forms that you will give the land and also the people that use it

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with your whole heart whatever you do in your work will be the seed for the next generation and really

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thinking about those next generations and something that cornelia has um been very engaged with so

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i’ll take you through the show

A sense of generosity

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now we’re in the exhibition and um i think before we go into specific projects i will say that um

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what one can take away from this show is a sense of generosity of her work and the idea that there isn’t an effort

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of shoehorning design into a particular object of spectacle it’s much more generous in standing and

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in any of her landscapes if any of you have done that which i’m sure you have there’s a real experience or feeling

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a sense of rootedness or connection to the earth and that’s something that i think really resounds in her work

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um the exhibition was divided into four sections and um both hillary and myself

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curated two sections uh so i’ll walk you through all four of them

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the first one was around playgrounds and around

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social housing are the two that um i curated and then hillary curated the public projects and the private

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residences um i think what was really interesting from from my my interest was really

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about cornelia’s ability to connect the human emotional human spirit

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to a design into a place and really thinking about landscape as something that brings one more connected to their

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environment and for others um cornelia actually

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uh passed uh unfortunately last month uh and i

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before she passed in april i had asked her we had just talked about legacy earlier

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and i had i’d asked hernia for some comments on what she might think for students coming

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forward now what would the students in architecture and landscape really want to hear what should they what should

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they be looking for and she and her words were basically um treat every day as earth day

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and study ecology and biology so really thinking about uh the environment in a very different way

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and she said basically that is my advice and so as we go forward i’m sure there

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are many students that will continue to follow in her footprint and we’ll go through the show

Playgrounds

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so i wanted to start the playground discussion with a drawing uh by an anonymous uh student

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um that talks about playgrounds and um this i’m sure you can read it but

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in case you can’t i would like an adventure playground because it would probably give me something to do the

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reason i say this is because i’m always bored and i think that this this piece in

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particular um starts off this connection that cornelia had with

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how children want to engage with their environment and how they want to engage with others and so that social connection

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as well as the physical playing outdoors type of thing [Music]

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there are three playgrounds in this playground exhibition we’ll be talking about what the this one

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is this first one is 18th and bigler and this took place uh in the it was her first project actually in uh 1952.

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uh it was a street corner uh parking space that is turned into a park a

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private park um and so we’ll go through 18th and bigler her

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next project that we will talk about is the xbox creative center in

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1967 and then we’ll go all the way over to a 20 a 2012 project that she had done

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in the north so we’re really spanning almost 68 years of playground work that

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she had done so as uh cornelia had been a community

Packet Park

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planner uh upon great upon graduating recently after graduating from harvard and um

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the it was actually a very interesting planning engagement where it developed a lot of

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outreach to the community speaking with communities interviews exploring ideas that communities might want

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from that work uh cornelius first solo project was at 18th and bigger streets in philadelphia

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and so this is a packet park that was designed for multiple ages of people in the

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neighborhoods and what we can see from these different types of playing which i think

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is really interesting you can see the different uh ages that she was thinking of so you’ve got the ball fields on this

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on the left-hand side sorry on the right-hand side uh for older oldest other children to be

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playing this very circle here this play area is a concrete um ring that actually is still

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in existence today um but for young toddlers and young children to sit on and play on so it’s a very low low

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circle and then as you start moving through there’s more like board games shuffle games

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basketball volleyball so all these different types of activities for different age groups and different

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communities to come together so that was part of what uh this this playground entailed

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we’ll also look um right over here at the way that children play and we’ll see those connections come together

Playground

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so one of the things that’s quite interesting about cornelia’s way of working with playgrounds is trying to

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understand what children want to do and um so this is an example of some of the

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work that studies that her office she had prepared and there are some really interesting little

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activities for children listed on here such as making things anything and then help

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their younger brothers and sisters but that’s actually crossed off because maybe that wasn’t as important after all

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um painting planting sliding and rolling and slides and i think

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when we when we see some of the cornea’s playground works we really do see some of these activities

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considered in a really interesting way so we’re standing now in front of the

Project for the Canadian

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project for the canadian at the children’s creative center for the canadian pavilion at the expo 67. this

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was really a chance for cornelia to bring her ideas to an international scale

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you can see here the letter from the commissioning governor from the canadian government

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we’re asking requesting her participation in this project and what i would like to point out here

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we started talking about activities just a moment ago so these drawings are actually showing

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some of the unique activities that she was exploring at the time so we’ve got sight and elevation and sketch for

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walking to create a rocking boat inside a stream that was created in the park and you’ve got other

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types of activities there was a lot there were mounds to play on there were things for up and down

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building loose parts all of those things were very important to the design that she was doing here

Safe Playgrounds

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one of the things i wanted to bring in terms of context of play and active play and some of the things that were

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being explored um played got playground design had gone through a numerous number of different types of changes uh

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throughout history uh in the 1980s there started to be a movement towards more safety creating

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playground structures that were safe and in fact uh sociologists have talked about the idea of what this effective

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has had on children um in terms of cognitive ability and risk aversion in the in the future

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um so i think cornelia’s work while it was coming through in the 80s she was still doing this kind of work that was

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very active and very social socially engaged and cognitively engaged uh while

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the market itself was turning towards um things that would be more safe where um you know if a bone was broken that

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was a bad thing and so i think it’s really interesting in that context to think about her playgrounds

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as exploring things that we’re not trying to standardize or to create the safest environment but to create a learning

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environment an experiential environment so this plan of the children’s creative center

Childrens Creative Center

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actually shows a ability to replicate the design that’s created on the site

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that’s called a packet pack which is quite small can fit in any urban environment quite easily so the idea of

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experimenting with different types of activities that can be replicated or scaled into different neighborhoods is

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part of what this plan demonstrates um following this project cornelia han overlander went on

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to um author a handbook for playgrounds which was commissioned by the

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government of canada and it’s called playgrounds a plea for utopia or the recycled urban lot

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and that was published in 1974 i believe

East 3 School

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so we’re standing here in front of the east 3 school it’s a k-12

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school that was built in the northwest territories and about two degrees from the arctic circle

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and it was done in collaboration with penn taylor architects and what we have here is a plan that

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describes the layout of the of the school playgrounds so kindergarten in the most

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sheltered area moving through elementary school higher ages farther up um here shows a

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few of the uh different types of play materials using logs and wood and things

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in the area the creating the identity for play um but what i was really interested in

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here is really talking about her research process uh cornelia had in

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one of her files there was a uh four post-its and they’ve one said research

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play research the arctic research climate change

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research um the environment research client’s father was the fourth

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one and so those four things were kind of her area of research for this project

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you can see in researching play what she’s done is create a play matrix which identifies by different age groups so

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we’ve got grade one two three kindergarten one to three and then grade eight to twelve and

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you’ve got different types of activities whether they’re um you know spaces for sitting

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uh spaces to distinctly experience something there’s even um learning with elders for each of the age groups so but

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you know you start with stories in the in the younger age as you go further up uh there are things like hunting and

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fishing food processing so there are all these activities that are laid out in terms of how they might use the space

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i will now move over to this letter this letter is actually

Letter

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what cornelia had given to the school when this when the um school opened in 2012

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and um one of the le we’ll read one of the phrases here that says

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we hope you will learn more about the different plants from your family and community

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elders as well as from your teachers these are the plants of your own home

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which area which have also provided medicines and food as well as materials for building and implements for hundreds

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of years now it is your turn to learn all you can about this special

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resource so that one day you will be able to teach others and i think that was about the legacy of

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carrying on food security was something that cornelia has talked about and has

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expressed concern with and so this this project actually demonstrates some of that a lot of uh berries and the berry

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picking is actually one of the activities and i think there’s there’s also an

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interesting we’ll see this when we go to the northwest territories project as well um cornelia

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uh because being so far north uh it was very difficult actually to um

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to propagate the native landscape and so she ended up taking the seeds collecting seeds taking

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them to vancouver germinating them for two years and then bringing them back to plant them and

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basically inserting them inside the existing native plants it’s called invisible mending and so that’s

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something that she did and also these trees that had been moved were uh moved by root pruning the first year

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so that they could become a little bit stronger before being transplanted so there were a lot of things in thinking

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about how to work in the north and in a different way [Music]

Schoolkill Falls

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so we’re in the section of social housing now and for those that may not

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know what social housing or public housing is that’s often government supported or non-profit housing and

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cornelia has always had a very a strong interest in working with social projects

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we’re standing in front of schoolkill falls which is one of her earlier projects it was done in 1955

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and cornelia had been selected by architect oscar stoneroff to

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work on this project with dan kiley and what it is is a large residential development

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one of the things that’s quite interesting about this project is that they were starting to develop specifications and

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communities started thinking about maintenance specifications how to

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trim or retain uh trees so that they would last for a longer time and to keep them

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um in their best state for uh lasting longer um there’s a there’s a note up

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here that is was part of the project as well that really talks about engaging with community and what work

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still is left to be done and then i think also her her look at how

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tree spacing and where trees tree typology that would allow certain trees in certain areas and give

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access to light and to green space for all residents at the

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same time she was working on mill creek which is on the other side here and this was a project by louis khan so

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she was working with dan kelly on both projects simultaneously

Portland Hotel

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so we’re standing now in front of the portland hotel which was uh done in collaboration with arthur erickson and

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nick milkovich in 2008 to the uh 2008

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this is a project that was uh designed for hastings street in vancouver

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for people that are struggling with mental and then substance addiction

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and what is quite interesting about this project from my view is that

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cornelia generally when doing industrial types of gardens one might put in strong

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sturdy full you know foolproof types of uh materials or plants that will be

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indestructible and instead cornea decided she wanted to create this like a backyard

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so to create more of a residential experience for the for the

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residents and so she’s got apple trees uh she’s thinking about blueberries strawberries

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wooden benches instead of steel benches all these things that would make it feel a little bit more like a backyard

Northwest Territories Building

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so we’re standing in front of the northwest territories building the legislative assembly in the

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northwest territories building it was completed in 1995 it was

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done by uh in collaboration courtney’s work was done in collaboration with matsutake

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pin um williams matthew architects

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this is a project that uh similar to the other school that we talked about the

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east 3 school that used invisible mending this project as well was actually the

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precursor to the school in terms of invisible mending taking planting seeds bringing them to

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vancouver and then planting them two years later in the site the idea is to

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use the natural landscape to look as natural as possible if maybe someone came by and said i

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don’t see the design that the landscape architect did i think that’s the point and um this does demonstrate it this image

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is actually a photograph uh by her edgardies it was done in 2005.

Legislative Assembly Building

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so there are three drawings um here for the northwest territories building we’re going to look closely at this

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build this linkages to the legislative assembly building which is showing the different path of

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experiences and i really love how these are laid out where there’s uh rocks nodes for information uh there’s a

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ceremonial area over here there’s uh the fray the lake and then the municipal

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plaza and the past the paths itself so really exploring the experience of how one

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might encounter the assembly building and the landscaping around it

Tiger Garden

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so the tiger garden is um a project that kunia collaborated with moshe safte

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architects on it’s at the national gallery in ottawa um it was completed in 1988

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and what we’re seeing here is in the presentation plan but also in the um

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site of the particular planting specifications themselves is

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cornelia had defined the design of this project around um

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the tar savage and um uh two two artists uh ay jackson’s

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paintings in particular and so the particular um shape in the paintings of the

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the um coniferous uh trees in general is something that she wanted to emulate in the garden and

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so you can see the the identification of the different um plantings and then also

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i think when there’s there are stories that when she went to the nursery uh to get these plantings she was um

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scrambling to get the least attractive plants because they were the ones that um

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would have this character that she wanted and they know she was kind of like are you sure you want that one but

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um that was something that was part of this but uh this is the tiger garden

Rooftop Gardens

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there’s an interesting connection with uh rooftop gardens i think cornelia’s first rooftop garden is in vancouver and

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it’s the robson square um complex and it was completed in 1978 working

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with arthur ellison and just the knowledge of 40 years of

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rooftop garden design and the types of planting materials and the technology required to make them successful is

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something that she had deep passion for and also um had built quite a knowledge base uh when we think about the idea of

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rewilding a city or bringing the wilderness back into the city rooftop gardens is one of those prime

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opportunities to do so and so these are nice examples so we’re standing in front of

Monteverdi Estates

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monteverdi estates this is one of the projects in the private residences

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category and it’s a 20-unit complex on a very steep uh ravine in

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vancouver and what it was a collaboration with arthur erickson architects and cornelia

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it was done in 1982 one of the things that’s quite interesting about this project is how

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the attention to not only the plantings and what those plantings would be but thinking about 40

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years from now how would they be maintained and maintenance was a very strong um expression in the things that were

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selected for this show so there’s one um memorandum that i just love and i might

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read to you it says after an application of fertilizer crushed dry moss should be

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sprinkled over the roof areas in order to encourage the greening of the roots so that’s one maintenance tip and

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there’s another one here that’s a much longer and i won’t read it but it’s really talking uh it’s a note to eva

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matsutsuki from cornelia hanover la hanover lander really talking about the kinds of things that need to happen in

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order to keep the native landscape looking as native as possible and so that lasting duration

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um 40 years uh on it’s still in intact and in very good condition

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so that’s a testament and when we think about the earliest maintenance schedules that she started

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with school kill follows um it’s it’s something that maintenance has been a very strong

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interest not only do you plant something and let it grow but how does it how does it maintain and stay

Wendy Oberlander

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this final piece in the exhibition is a film by cornelia’s daughter wendy overlander it was completed in 2001

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what uh the film content it has archival footage and it also has a narration by wendy and it has come

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compose music um what this is about is wendy going back with her mother 60

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years after leaving berlin uh in 1938 when crystal melt happened as

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i mentioned earlier when cornelia had been given her letter from her grandmother um she had escaped germany

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and this was her first time back together and so it’s it’s an exploration of that

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experience and moving forward in a different direction from the past and there’s some beautiful

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phrases of cornelius it’s a it’s a it shows a very personal and wonderful

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relationship that they have between the two so thank you for joining this tour uh

Closing

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with me today um and i do hope that you will have the chance to visit the

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exhibition uh the cornelia han overlander genius lokai is open until october 17th at the art

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gallery of alberta it will go on to travel but we encourage you to come to the art gallery first

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so thank you for joining me and have a good day

QA

28:45

well thank you so much amree for that lovely tour that was really excellent so now is

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everyone’s opportunity to ask the question of amaree so if you would like to ask a question if you are visiting on

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facebook you can write in the chat or if you’re on zoom you can just write in the q a function

29:04

and i am going to be moderating uh the facebook so you’ll see me look at my phone but i am paying attention

29:11

okay great i’m just gonna check the comments here and

29:16

okay so i have a question to start off for you um i’m very curious just about how this

Inspiration for the exhibition

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exhibition started and also like what was your inspiration for choosing to do

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an exhibition about cornelia as a curator nice question thank you michael um

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i i think that i as i’ve been an admirer as many people have and many canadians

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have of cornelia’s work for a long time i think she really has been breaking the ground in so many ways for

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landscape architecture i think one of the questions that um i often get is why

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is landscape architecture in a museum and i think landscape architecture as a practice is

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something that’s um really helping to reveal a different way of architecture it’s less about the

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buildings and really thinking about the environment thinking about the culture uh this the social interactions that

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happen on the street all of those things that happen within and around a building is

30:18

equally important in architecture and so i think landscape architecture as a practice um is very important and i and so

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bringing that forward i think is something that felt important to do but also just being a huge admirer of her

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work for a long time yeah definitely she has such a huge influence and also it was proved to be so important landscape

30:38

architecture in parks especially during the pandemic like you know everyone needed to find some some calm and often

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that was through going outside so i have another question so this is uh this is a little bit of a

Projects that are still relevant

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of a leap but i’m just curious about all the projects that cornelia has done

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and what are some that you find that are still like they’re all very relevant but what

31:02

are some that are extremely relevant in 2021 [Music]

31:09

well i i have to mention the playground because i think that’s uh that’s

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something that’s uh really important um and i think um the you know if we think

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about some of the the early playgrounds like the 18th and bigler street um

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the fact that it’s still intact and it’s not being occupied or used in the same way that it was it’s evolved and maybe

31:35

it’ll come back in a different reiteration but it’s still intact and i think that’s something that um is important i think a lot of her

31:42

public projects um you know working with the the vancouver public library the

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national gallery those projects are very uh strong um i think um there were some projects

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that we didn’t include in the exhibition that were also strong and i’d say the ck toy building is is really um

32:00

groundbreaking for the way that it really used um water sustainably so it

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um it recycles in a way that that was quite uh forward at the time and it’s still quite relevant

32:12

um if you think about her um uh uh

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sorry what is the um robson square uh project that was done in the 70s with

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arthur erickson um that that project was very instrumental in really thinking

32:28

about roof gardens and we’ve seen in in architecture and design roof roof design rooftop uh landscaping

32:36

becoming much more relevant as people start to think about addressing climate change and these were

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early projects so there were there are lessons in some of these projects still yeah definitely yeah there’s so many

How didCornelia get captivated by playgrounds

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lessons and especially when you see the exhibition it’s so nice to pick up on different things that maybe uh as like a

32:56

a person just living their life can incorporate into their garden or maybe like uh thinking about like playgrounds

33:02

in their own backyard so i think there’s so many lessons i have a question here from helen um helen c

33:09

how did cornelia get captivated by playgrounds and then the second part and how did her thought process with

33:15

playgrounds work with playground influenced the progression of her work

33:22

um i think that there uh there’s probably a number of ways to answer this but i’ll answer it the best i can as far

33:28

as how she got interested in playgrounds and i think um she was doing a lot of early community

33:34

planning work and in uh you know working with communities on uh surveying uh

33:41

access to certain things and um understanding how communities connected to their environment what kind of public

33:47

spaces were available and that sort of thing and so i think i think some of that actually informed her her way of

33:55

connecting with um the public there’s one story that was an anecdote that she’d given in an interview that talks

34:01

about um she was interviewing a drug store owner that had a parking lot next to his

34:07

drugstore and he said well someday the city is going to make this a park and she said but you

34:14

need a park now and so she started drawing drawing the park and so i think

34:19

i mean not right there but i mean that did it became a park because she saw the need for it right away and so i think

34:26

that you know i don’t know if that’s the only way that she was connected to uh designing um parks but i on playgrounds

34:34

but i know she also was very passionate about she had three children and so she was doing research sometimes the kids would

34:41

come along when they when she was checking out on on you know public uh parks and things so i think a connection

34:48

with learning connection with children and also just uh her back background

34:53

work before uh moving to vancouver as a community planner uh we’re probably the instrumental

34:58

forces yeah it’s interesting how kids are really good with your research if you

Invisible mending

35:04

have kids that’s really good and it was something that i noticed just with their research when they were in

35:09

in the northwest territories they also consulted with children’s which is really great and one of the things i

35:15

wanted to maybe ask you a little bit more about that project you briefly talked about invisible mending can you

35:22

explain what that is and how cornelia used it a little bit more yes so and

35:27

this invisible mending was actually initiated with the northwest territories

35:33

legislative building which was a few years earlier than the school but the idea was was really

35:41

placing the native landscape back and so if you find spaces where a bog has been

35:47

um altered or damaged in some way bringing the native species back and play and

35:53

just planting little little ones back that become the natural grit landscape

35:59

there was one uh interview i’d heard from when i was doing research and i won’t be able to tell you which one it

36:05

was because i don’t remember but i remember the person walking by the garden in the

36:11

northwest territories was talking about how they didn’t see they didn’t know what had been done they

36:16

didn’t see the design and that that is that is the purpose of an invisible mending is if you can actually bring it

36:23

to its natural state so that it looks like we haven’t touched it in a way

36:28

okay yeah that’s that’s really fabulous i’m just gonna encourage people to write their questions in the chat

36:35

uh so if you have any questions amory is here to answer them um can you tell me a little bit one

36:42

thing in the show is we didn’t really touch on was the video can you talk to me a little bit about the video it seems

36:48

like there’s there’s obviously lovely drawings and amazing photographs but there’s also a really special video

36:54

included in the exhibition yes so the video was um done and i think we did

36:59

show a little tiny bit of it in the the last part but we didn’t talk about it so um cornelia’s daughter wendy overlander

37:06

is the creator of the video and um she and her mother went back to germany

37:12

60 years after um cornelia had left germany due to the um

37:17

to the times with crystal non and uh so they went back and it was a reunification of place you know

37:25

coming together again to find this place and it it kind of intersperses archival

37:31

footage which is um very blurry and and you know very um rustic if you will um

37:37

with uh some some voice overlay of wendy and also uh

37:42

cornelia’s words and so it’s really i mean it what i liked about it was that it took um an idea of landscape because

37:52

you know reconnecting with the place and land again a way it brings a kind of um

37:59

different layer to landscape it’s no longer just a flat terrain but it’s really starting to bring the memories

38:04

and the experiences of a place uh layering on top of that landscape so that’s that’s kind of what i thought was

38:10

quite interesting about the video it’s um beautifully done um and it’s

38:16

uh let’s see if i can say anything else about it um i but i don’t know is there

38:22

anything else you want i mean there was no that’s that’s great there’s music there’s a bass clarinet

38:27

[Laughter] yeah no it’s good it’s uh it’s a it’s

38:34

i’ve been in this space recently and it’s really nice to kind of sit by yourself and watch the video it’s

38:40

really immersive so i encourage everyone to check out the exhibition which is currently on display or maybe it’s

38:46

traveling to your local like to if you’re in winnipeg or if you’re in toronto so that’s really great i have a

38:53

couple more questions but i’m just gonna check the chat to see if anyone else has the questions i’ve been talking a lot is

38:59

there anything that you know you kind of want to say that maybe you missed in your presentation or you want to

39:05

elaborate on um i think i mean i felt like it was

39:11

i probably went very heavy on the play and the social because those were the two areas that i curated i think there’s

39:18

there’s a lot of depth in the public projects and also in the private residences

39:23

and so i you know i think just having the opportunity to really be in the space

39:29

and see the drawings and see the the you know the color and the the use of um exploration of what kinds

39:36

of plants should be planted in certain places and why and some of the thought processes behind these designs you

39:42

really get that just standing in front of a lot of these uh drawings and illustrations

Survival of the landscape

39:47

yeah definitely well i have another question here and it’s about the survival of the landscape so how did

39:54

cornelius landscape survive she was concerned with maintenance did it work did the plants she started in vancouver

40:00

survive after being planted elsewhere hmm there’s a video that we screen screened

40:07

earlier city dreamers and in that video um cornelia is talking about the um

40:13

robson square and how it was planted differently than how she had you know

40:18

some of it was planted differently um so i think there are i’m sure there’s there’s always

40:24

challenges where it’s never going to be exactly um as you wish but i think that

40:30

uh i would say from my from my purview there are a lot of projects that have

40:35

had some good lasting um stay and i think the um uh

40:41

the housing project um that we that we showed monteverdi estates was

40:46

a nice example of something where the landscape has maintained itself you know in in a lot

40:53

of ways it’s still you you can go to it 40 years later and still get the intent or the the feeling

40:59

of what um what that project is about um that you know so i don’t know if that

41:05

that helps i think um maybe the idea of whether it’s lasting or not was less important than

41:11

the fact that it was connecting humans to their environment and creating um i talked about rewilding a little bit

41:18

and near the end of that video and i think that was a concept that was very corneli was quite interested in this

41:24

idea that let’s bring more planted life more nature into our urban

41:29

environments um yeah definitely and there’s the funny scene where cornelia in that video she’s

Where are her records housed

41:36

talking to a city worker and he’s assessing the the park and she’s like i’m the

41:41

landscape architect this doesn’t look good which i thought was amazing that they’re

41:48

they’re so uh involved in you know what they design and what they create i have another question from marianne um

41:55

where are most of her records housed the cca the canadian center for

42:00

architecture has the collection of cornelia’s work um it’s a large massive

42:06

body of work and they’ve archived it all and uh it’s yeah it’s it’s all there there

42:13

might be other pieces elsewhere but that’s what the large body of work is

42:18

yeah great well that’s fabulous i think we have time for one more question if any

Amerys research

42:23

questions are super pressing we’ll just give it a little moment i’m also going to check facebook so if you are on facebook

42:30

please feel free to write a question

42:36

so we’ll just give it a moment i have asked all my questions [Laughter]

42:42

so we’ll just see if anything is uh happening in the chat

42:48

i guess maybe since we mentioned the cca can we talk a little bit about research

42:53

like both cornelia’s research because it seemed like that was such an important part of their practice but also your

42:59

research where did your research start um well i was at the cca researching the

43:06

archives and reading i mean i guess i would say my research started by

43:11

visiting some of cornelia’s work and feeling the experience of being in the spaces and feeling that it was different

43:19

but then there’s a wonderful book uh that susan harrington wrote about

43:24

cornelius um uh body of work and uh so that that is

43:29

another wonderful resource and i can share the link to that um

43:34

but i i would say the cca and the res that the research there and i i would

43:39

also say that in going through a lot of the records that cornelia was a deep researcher like there were there were

43:45

boxes of archives of articles you know like the new yorker on climate an

43:50

article about climate change from the new yorker whether it be um you know local uh treasures from the

43:56

places if she was working in the north in the arctic you know certain local publications or um stories about someone

44:03

that was being that had recovered something so that you know it wasn’t uh related

44:09

necessarily just to plants or to square footage or space but it was really more

44:14

um experiential uh kind of research so it’s really nice to see that

44:20

yeah that’s amazing yeah and also just speaking of you talked a little bit about books there’s also a catalog for

Closing remarks

44:26

this exhibition which you can purchase if you would like it’s in our shops it’s uh really this beautiful catalog this

44:32

bright orange catalog so if you’re wanting to learn more and doing your own research uh that’s a good source i see

44:38

that there’s no more questions in the chat so maybe we’ll just end it there uh amy do you have any last parting words

44:45

for us uh no i would just say it’s been a real pleasure to

44:50

have the opportunity to curate this show and co-curate it with hit with hillary lutwin um it was it was a remarkable journey uh

44:58

going through the pandemic it was originally slated to be installed much earlier and then we waited because of

45:04

the pandemic but it’s really nice to see it up and um i hope that you’re able to

45:10

visit the aj while it’s up through october 17th and

45:15

see the works in person because uh it’s there’s nothing like being in person in front of some of these drawings to

45:21

really see things and experience it but yeah thank you thanks for the update

45:26

yeah well thank you for thank you for talking with me and thank you for the tour and i’m also going to say thank you to everyone that attended and also helen

45:34

uh who is behind the zoom doing some technical stuff and helped with the video so thank you to everyone and i

45:41

will say goodnight i hope everyone has a really nice evening it was so so nice that you all joined us

45:48

bye for now

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