Introduction

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hello everyone and welcome to our tour of the exhibition cornelia han overlander

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genius loci by justin jenkins my name is michael magnuson i’m the new public program and

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

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we are currently in the aga building which is in 36 territory in edmonton

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the traditional land of diverse indigenous peoples including the cree blackfoot metis nakota sioux iroquois

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inuit and ojibwe salto anishinabe we acknowledge and extend gratitude to

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the many first nations metis and inuit whose footsteps have marked these lands for generations

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and who continue to call this place home today this tour is part of the public program for the exhibition

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cornila hand overlander genius loci curated by amory cavalli and dr hillary

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ludwin this exhibition explores oberlander’s work to reveal connections that forge community and foster a deeper

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alignment with ecology and the natural environment featuring renowned works such as robson square

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the national gallery of art and the legislative assembly building and capital site at the of the northwest

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territories this is the very first hybrid program uh we have people in the background

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and we also have people uh watching zoom and also facebook so that’s really exciting uh this tour

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will last roughly one hour with the q a at the end uh one thing to mention for people

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attending virtually is that i will be moderating the chat so if you have any questions for a q a

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please use it use the q a function and we will try to answer them at the end uh this aga live is made possible in

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part through support from the heart and soul fund by epcor and i would also like to thank the candidate council for the arts

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now i will introduce justine jenkins our tour leader this evening justine jenkins has over 25 years of

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experience in horticulture and environmental design and is an education coordinator at the university

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of alberta botanical gardens their work includes education design and consultation for home and public

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installations their artistic practice in print making has a keen interest in intelli

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intelligence mark making artistic and focuses on observation of our

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natural environment sorry it’s hard to say that word so without further ado here’s justine

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thank you very much michael thank you very much to everybody who’s watching and thanks very much to the aga

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for having me it’s an honor to be here i’m really excited about um design uh i was i have

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had a diverse career and i’m really excited about uh some of the work that i did do at the

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university of alberta botanic garden i’m no longer there but i was there for i was at the university for 18 and a

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half years and i i’m kind of a plant nerd so that’s a positive thing i think

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i like being a plant nerd so um i’m interested in plants but i also have

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graduated from ocad university and studied environmental design there so i do know about design and i have taught

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segments of design and i i also have designed many things um but i’m very interested in how

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communities interact and intersect with our environments and there’s something that

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i’ve observed in overlanders work over the course of her 70-year career

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and that is what i call a pattern language pattern language is something that um

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[Music] really frames what i’d call the

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colloquial and it makes people comfortable and

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she was a genius with this quite literally it create it we’re blessed really to be

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able to actually see things that are so understated in the natural environment

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but required a tremendous amount of intense research in order to get there

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there’s you know didactic panels and interpretation and there’s a really lovely gallery

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guide that’s probably in the shop for sale which is great reading um just a little bit about details and

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souvenir i know sometimes people come to things like this because they’re interested in landscape design

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they’re designers they’re architects they’re public programmers [Music]

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they may be interested in like social housing or perhaps just the environment in

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general and then people are here sometimes just because they want to affect change or affect something

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interesting in their own personal world and it has nothing to do with

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anything that may involve procuring a landscape architect to do that

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so tonight i’d like to talk about things that will hopefully be of interest to you that may apply in some way plants and

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people apply to your living and then other people’s living i hope that’s what you’d like to listen

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to and if you don’t please feel free to interrupt me and ask questions and i’ll try to answer any of those other

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questions as well okay so um maybe we’ll just come into the gallery here and we’re going to kind of do this in a way that

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showcases some of the fantastic projects and some of the details

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now every once in a while i’ll talk a little bit more about plants specifically so if anyone grows plants

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if anyone grows plants or would like to grow plants i have a lot of background growing plants so i can certainly help you

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with those specific things but then i’m going to talk a little bit about design and some of the things that which i

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personally think are genius and perhaps mindfully if we could come into you know a

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partnership with our built environments and consider these things as people in our community i think it

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would help our living in the city so i’m hoping that that’s reasonable um when we talk about some

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projects and you can look at the exhibit yourself i mean many people have come and seen this exhibit more than once i’ve run into

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people more than once in the exhibit myself and i’m taking fervent notes and writing things and going back and coming back

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i create a little bit of attention just because i’m looking at things in such fine detail but one thing i really love about this

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particular project is um cornelio is really a champion for

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people but people who lived in a place where how can we how can we make something wonderful out of the place that we have

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and i find sometimes we don’t always do that in our modern living in 2021

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well maybe the pandemic did this for us we had to kind of make something great out of what we have

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instead of always looking at something else being better than what we have and one of those projects that’s just

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phenomenal is this neighborhood um playground that was designed um in

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philadelphia and one thing that i just wanted to say was she had this amazing attention to detail

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that is integrated lots of aspectual things about living that didn’t have just to do with

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it’s it’s called a playground so we often think about playgrounds as places where children go so i think

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about a modern tot lot and this is a bit of a criticism but you know you send your kids there

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and you sit on a park bench and the kids uh go on to prefab you know playground

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equipment and then there’s you’re bored and hardly waiting for them to leave

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like are we bored yet can we go home uh and and these playgrounds were designed

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so that people could interact of all ages all backgrounds and basically had complete respite

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in the city so the idea of providing respite to people it was really a huge goal of hers you

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know it doesn’t matter about your social background doesn’t matter about how much money you have it doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or

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poor she designed for people in general and one thing about this project that i

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absolutely love is that she had places for people to actually play games but but people could have

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you know if you’re adults you could play games so you could hang around and you could go and um you know play chess or you could

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play other games and then there were play areas and a lot of times what she ended up doing is

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implementing what she would call like a junkyard playground into a space which is amazing and and

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built forms that were just replications of something in nature but they weren’t there were no

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directions like if you want to use a teeter-totter you basically have you know gravity and someone across from

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you you know this is that’s the way works or a swing works but a lot of her built forms for

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children were very much spontaneous and sort of uh

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indirectly guiding children towards their own self-discovery and

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development which was something that i think if we could all guide ourselves to our

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own self-discovery and and um and uh just wonder in our natural world and natural world

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within the city and a sense of respite in a place i think that’s a good goal to have

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if we’re thinking about the things we want out of the city we live in edmonton is anticipating another million

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people to come into this footprint and the footprint is can’t just expand indefinitely

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it’s going to be a place that has to be usable and people will have less personal space

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and more communal space and so i guess what this plays to is a thought about

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how does that communal space that’s built in very small areas how is it socially equitable and

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developmentally equitable for everyone who uses it and that’s a thought it’s not just about

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children it’s just a thought okay and this is an example of some of her research she was amazing at her

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research and she did lots of research and then when she implemented things she implemented things that were

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totally incredible but also um gave a situation where um

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uh it seemed almost like it was effortless uh and that’s something that i find

Creative Space for Play

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really uh fantastic uh one project that i really

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wanna um focus on too is the creative space for play and did this project here

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for one thing i just if i as a printmaker if nobody minds i’m just gonna come over and talk about these prints

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these design prints i know here’s my big huge nerd

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the color in these are just phenomenal this printing this is not this is this is like a uh

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blueprints like an old school brown print that’s colored but also partially hand

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rendered and uh just a phenomenal for its own sake

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piece of art it’s incredible but one thing about this project the canadian government pavilion

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children’s creative play garden that was just amazing in my mind is the use of an ability to

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implement a space that she called a vest park pocket like a vest pocket park

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so basically you have a vacant lot somewhere build a park i’m gonna just this is a question you

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don’t have to answer but if you could stick it in the back of your mind and think about it when you’re traveling through edmonton

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on your bicycle a public transit or your car you can’t find a place to park the best

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thing about it is how many times do we stop and there’s a little tiny area that’s just a vacant park and

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wouldn’t that be great if there was a garden or a park there

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just a little space that’s this big and there are trees and a place and respite

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and benches it would be a different city so it’s something about the way she

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thought things could get scaled up or scaled down anywhere this is a plan of course so this is

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platinum plan that shows you know different areas based on age which is quite interesting and the

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interesting thing i also felt was there was a nursery area that that was enclosed and that was for you

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know safety you could leave a four-year-old in there and nothing would happen to them really

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probably okay and they were free to explore so what’s in there sand there’s also

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you know hedges and then there’s also trees the scale of trees are something that i

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find really interesting the full-scale trees in these designs so

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this is like obviously an elevation drawing or actually a prospective drawing of that

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plan uh to scale has the area where there’s a viewing platform for the pavilion so you

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could be a casual interactor in this space but still gain some respite from the trees and the green

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area and then also the built forms and it’s pleasing so it’s a pleasing

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space but it’s the world in miniature and there’s a couple of examples of world of miniature that i want to talk

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about because that’s something that’s when people are trying to design landscapes i think what they do is they often say you know

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okay make a list of the plants that you like i want a native garden i want a pollinator garden or an indigenous

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garden or something where the plants are native or or this is naturalized or it’s a

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cottage gardener there’s certain types of garden design and that’s fantastic but it’s also a

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matter of saying how do we create a small world in miniature so that we can have a lovely place of

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respite for ourselves and that pattern language where you pick on the pickup on

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colloquial things that make people comfortable inherently you’re going to find a way to provide respite

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and one of the things that prenila did that was completely genius was

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instead of taking a park which we find an awful lot that has trees lining the outside and a

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huge expanse of lawn and there’s nothing on the inside she created sort of a focal point

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where the trees provide respite in the center of the space and then everything flows from the

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outside of that which is something that makes it so that you could play under there and feel respite but you

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could also be along the edges of this and feel some sense of respite it’s a place where you

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feel safe comfortable and it’s a small scale design small scale in the sense that it can be

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sized up or sized down and it’s really adaptable for lots of

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different types of uses and that sort of comfortable feeling for all

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the users one thing about this project that i

Sandbox

16:50

absolutely love is is this this slope in the sandbox area

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so i don’t know if any of you have children or you’ve probably been a child yourself

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but most children love to climb all over everything so really literally she would take the

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natural terrain and she would actually implement you know a sloped retaining

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wall many times in her designs that would create a place where somebody wanted to climb up

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so often cornelia was a genius for working with the typography as it existed rather than

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altering the typography and saying well there’s a there’s yeah there’s like a huge slope here and let’s

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just level the site and somebody would say some other person would say yes exactly

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like the slope would be a hindrance and it’s impossible to grade or or build into but but she

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would capitalize on that and there’s a private residence later on in the exhibition that shows that

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which is really quite a genius way to draw people into what others might consider to be a

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disadvantage but was quite phenomenal

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this project here is probably the most exciting project in this exhibition for me and there are some

East 3 School

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things that i find just completely amazing the east 3 school is located

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2 degrees above the arctic circle and it’s built on permafrost so there’s

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a series of pilings in which the buildings anchor down into the ground climate

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change is a real huge factor in the design of this and the building of this

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and this is an indigenous garden and uh school space

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we all know though in isolated communities people have to use a school for other

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things so the design of this school was for all over development for the students

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there so uh cornelia was um you know um she did amazing things where

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she would put in a berry patch she would put in things where berry picking was something that you could do

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but it was also a community gathering space where certain aspects of um

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you know gathering of community uh education from elders consultation

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with elders was something that she did in her design process and research gathering but it was also something that would be

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past school the timeline of a typical school day so the entire community could use the space

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one thing that’s amazing about the trees was she got permission to actually

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collect seeds and cuttings and trees that have what we call in the

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green world providence so you always want to put something in a landscape that has the same providence

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or a provenance that can withstand the conditions in which it’s being grown and where you live so what she did was

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she grew on these plants and then took them from the nursery so

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she’d take cuttings threw them on for two years and then they were installed in this project so

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they’re from the place the trees had all the roots cut they were cut two years before the

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installation so it was a situation where that is something that is from a site is

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carefully obtained from its natural environment its providence is of a place similar

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so then it goes back into a place similar it’s like saying i would like a brand

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new tree in my yard but it’s grown in

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oregon and it’s zone five or something and we live in zone four and it’s borderline hardy anyway

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and it’s awfully dry here and there’s other conditions that make it very difficult to transplant

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but if you grew a tree down the road and it had a providence so the seed and

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or the cuttings and or any type of propagation for that if it was a perennial if the providence is from this place or

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a place that’s similar in latitude or elevation or harshness of environment and then you

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turn around and install it in a place that’s new chances are that’s going to be very successful when you put it into

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the place that you want to grow into and so she was a pioneer that thought ahead of her time many

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people when they’re sourcing plant material don’t do that universities do that

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work at the university and other botanic gardens in canada do it all the time so i do know that people at ubc botanic

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garden do that other people who do collections management botanic gardens from all over the world actually do that

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so where’s the providence where did that seed come from if it was grown from seed if it’s grown at an elevation or an

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environment that’s similar to the one you’re planting into chances are that seed is more successful

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the worst thing you can do in such a harsh environment is try to put something in there

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and it’s such a benchmark and pivot point for the community and then it doesn’t work so this is a really important point now

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some things that cornelia did in this is a sort of her like her you know her research-based

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conversations about what she was doing which is phenomenal was she had like social studies

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sort of generally the natural settings and how how to how to learn with elders

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because she worked with elders and this is something that people do all the time now but this is 2007.

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this is a significant period of time ago in our living and this this is super helpful because

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if you consult with community groups that actually know something about the history of use of the plants

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then that ethnobotany gets translated into that social fabric and that social fabric is the

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children and everyone else in the community who needs to learn and garner from that rich knowledge and it’s actually in the

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site which helps everyone now some of the plants that are just fantastic

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that can be grown in edmonton that i wanted to kind of talk about here like for instance if you’re looking for

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trees that you want to install um the piscea glaca is the white spruce

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and you know it’s like some people might say it’s not the most flattering of all

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spruce but it is endemic to western canada so it’s something that you might want to

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consider and then of course uh lyrics uh lara cena which is

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like large that’s a deciduous conifer that drops its needles that loves to be grown in this area we

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have rosa cicularis which is native um and then also different types of species chapertia

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ketodensis which is a soapberry so it actually the fruit on the berry

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actually produces a soap or a lather saponin is in that and then also

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blueberries and cranberries so fruits small fruits part of the learning

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and connecting with community was berry picking was part of that curriculum adapted to

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social interaction and recreation which is quite interesting and then of course grasses one of the

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one of my favorite plants on her list is arctostophelus irva ersi which is bareberry

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and you can find that in the canadian rockies it’s an important medicinal plant and it’s a

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low-growing ericaceous evergreen ground cover which is really lovely so some of those plants are really great

24:46

if you’re looking on putting plants in your own garden and you think i’d like to source these and i don’t know what to grow

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that is endemic to this area some of these plants on this list can grow in your garden in edmonton

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so if you’re looking to put in a naturalized landscape that’s definitely worth a list to look

25:12

at this project here the skeena terrace low

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rent housing project and the reason the word low rent is kind of something that makes me nervous

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in the sense that i don’t know whether people should be referred to as being able to pay less rent than other

25:33

people but the nice thing about this project is um

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and maybe that term was coined and given so it’s nothing you can control but one thing

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that was fantastic about this was the use of plant material to create

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in social housing to create courtyards and to create access to

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food plants which we find all the time this project was built and the this

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project was built and it is basically intact as it was built so in this advocating landscape it was

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designed for marginalized people to have access to

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housing that created a a green and lush

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place where the concept of having your actual own backyard

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might not be something that people have ever been used to but when there is

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a sense of respite and a place for someone that sense of place creates

26:40

more comfort and it also helps create a bridge between

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um you know having a situation where you lack and it’s inhospitable and you

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are in a place of comfort and it is more natural for you to feel that you actually are living

27:00

being in a place where perhaps much of your life might have been not so hospitable so it’s really

27:07

interesting how these areas here where you see all of these areas here this is areas where we have areas where

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there’s certain like little spaces they’re offset from each other in their

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design physically so that there’s a sense of some privacy which is

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perhaps unheard of when we’re trying to design apartments but then also corridors of green and

27:32

access to food plants effect food plants shade respite gathering places

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that is um perhaps perhaps we should be thinking of

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trying to implement that more so that if we have shared spaces that shared space is

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not just beautiful but also useful and it also provides for people who

27:55

perhaps have less than others so it’s something that i really love about the way she worked

28:02

now this project was built in 1965 so it’s almost 56 years old which is

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it sounds like something you see more in our choices in 2021

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but in 1965 it was something that people were on the edge of discovering as something that would be

28:24

actually truly helpful to you the human condition which i am truly inspired by

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so we’ll come over and we’ll talk a little bit more if that’s okay

28:40

about all of these things

Portland Hotel

28:52

now there might be some of these projects i touch on a little bit more than a little bit less i feel that

28:59

um one interesting thing about this um place here is the portland hotel public

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housing project um was designed with arthur erickson famous canadian architect

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but one thing that was really lovely about this was the use of the courtyard as a space

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where people could gather so that created an inclusive place where people could gather and also a

29:25

sense of respite for the areas there’s an expansive uh staircase between areas here

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where people could go and actually um you know

29:41

use of expansion in built forms creates a sense of luxury for most human beings

29:47

which was almost still afforded most of the time i mean we follow building codes and we

29:53

have to have a minimum space so two people can pass so i can go up and you can come down but this was designed so that there was

30:00

quite an expansive place for people to be able to actually interact um

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which is sort of unheard of in an urban setting so it’s really quite lovely you can see here in this

30:12

hand rendering it’s really lovely we have um you know a bridge area

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uh there is a place for growing plants like herbs for social housing for people to use so

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they could cook they could actually implement their own um food and communal

30:35

space like sharing and also um areas of uh in here we had apples

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okay and then um and apples and plums were implemented in the

30:49

design and that’s also food gathering so people who are perhaps on a tight budget don’t have

30:55

a lot of access to fresh food maybe leave live in a food desert which happens a lot in edmonton there’s no

31:01

access to fresh food or it’s very expensive she implemented these things in design

31:07

so that people had access so you could use the food and tents as it were that you could grow the food

31:14

and have a place where you could gather which is very useful to people i’m just going to

31:20

touch very quickly on this public housing project because the nice thing about this was again

31:27

public housing project that’s a little bit more advanced in the sense that the idea again for

31:33

uh cornelia um really worked on is was the idea that even though it was

31:39

a communal space it was like you had your own yard so some of the plants that

31:44

some of these plants some of the species of these plants won’t grow here but there are certain

31:51

things that are really super tough and hearty that if you’re looking for things to implement into your own natural

31:57

landscapes and you’re thinking i need something bulletproof uh some of the things that could

32:02

be grown in here grown here like from the point of view of their um

32:08

uh their genus rather than just their species that she’s got on our list that i really like are um and definitely worth a try

32:16

there’s lots of different kinds of roses here so they were grown for scent you know and also their beauty so

32:23

um canada is home to one of the i would suggest that modern rose

32:28

breeding in canada is probably the most prolific in the world so we have some of the most

32:34

interesting and hearty roses in the world being bred right now in canada and they have been bred in canada for a

32:41

significant period of time so there’s a huge plethora to to

32:46

bank yourself on and it might be something that people don’t often think about as a

32:52

plant so flowering shrubs and then also we have um a different uh different kinds of

33:00

honeysuckle but one one one honeysuckle that climbs that’s lovely and worth a try

33:06

is the drop more scarlet honeysuckle which was actually bred um by um bred by the skinner family

33:14

in um in manitoba so it’s a canadian bread honeysuckle with and it attracts

33:20

hummingbirds um and then also we have um uh different types of pines pines also

33:28

are extremely drought tolerant so they need a lot of sun and they’re also extremely drought tolerant so if

33:34

you’re looking for ways to implement things in the landscape don’t need tons of water that’s definitely something that

33:41

you might want to consider also if your plants are mulched they require 30 percent less water

33:49

yeah minimum 30 percent less water if they’re mulched so if you’re belong to a tree planting

33:55

group and you’re trying to revitalize natural areas if those trees are mulched they’re at

34:02

least 50 percent more likely to transplant because they’re mulched all you have to do is just put a little

34:07

bit of mulch around the root system and water them in and you’d be surprised now i’d like people to plant trees

34:13

differently than that but i’m just saying from a bare minimum it’s like a bare

34:19

minimum okay if anyone has questions about tree planting

34:27

oh yeah absolutely like this was 1954 which is totally phenomenal you know

34:32

like it’s just it seems timeless you know it’s timeless and then of course this project here was 1955

34:40

and it seems timeless so in 2021 we might need to look back at some of

34:46

the innovative things in order to help ourselves remember common human history

34:51

and how there was some very innovative things being done we’re going to talk about more

34:56

innovative things just right over here so if you want to join me we’ll go over here we’ll talk about more

35:03

innovative things

House

35:14

we’re going to talk about this house because this is pretty amazing does everybody want to

35:20

come right in we’ll have everyone come right in that way everybody feels like they can actually see this photograph

35:26

and these drawings okay so this is a classic example of how uh design was approached

35:34

with what existed okay so this landscape there’s a couple things going on here

35:39

that i find totally phenomenal okay and it is the house was built

35:46

and the landscape had a tremendous rise on one side of it okay

Front door

35:53

now it’s hard to sort of see however that’s the front door on the lower level

35:58

of the house so you’d come in the gravel drive and you’d go in here

36:04

now a lot of people would say what on earth would you why would you do that well it research has shown and from

36:12

interviewing and looking at the design drawings and everything else this was built like this because this

36:18

was clay and hardpan and to and to get an excavator in there in order to level up

36:23

that site would have been a complete nightmare and a huge cost so

Waterfall

36:30

the when a design gives you a problem the problem gives you a creative answer

36:36

so sometimes when you have a creative answer for that it’s just phenomenal so in this case one thing that’s

36:42

interesting about this planting here though is this is planted sort of like the waves

36:48

of the ocean it just cascades down a waterfall

36:54

the shrubs are planted just like this so they create a rhythm

37:00

and you don’t really realize it until you’re standing there that you go oh that’s so relaxing isn’t it

37:09

so a concept in nature is borrowed in the form which sounds like a

37:16

strange thing to say so there’s a pattern in the form that is bored from some other natural phenomena

37:23

and this is we see this in japanese garden design where the world is built miniature and

37:30

then there’s rocks and sky and clouds and parts of the natural

37:38

world that are sculpted into the plants but the application of this where

37:43

there’s a casca is cascading planting that is just a pattern language

37:50

the average person standing there just says to themselves i’m not sure why i feel so comfortable here and it’s

37:57

because those are those are replicating a cascading waterfall

38:02

on the edge of a slope in plant material that creates the scale and rhythm that

38:09

your body says oh that’s just like the water

38:16

and crea it’s created from a lot of research and a lot of intuitive intuition

38:21

which you don’t always recognize but there are things about stuff that you love and you think well i live in the

38:28

middle of a landlocked place with no water how does it and i love the water well

38:34

you have to work with what you have in this case it was a flaw

38:40

that was capitalized on in a built manner which i find intriguing

38:47

and i do believe that landscape is still intact so over all that time it’s still any

38:54

idea yeah actually i think it’s right here um

39:01

sorry you know what i’m very sorry because on

Plant List

39:07

her this initial design drawing that she has she just has the shrubs and the scale of them

39:14

but she doesn’t actually have the plant list on this so i’m sorry and on this this print here there’s

39:21

actually not a key for the shrubless so i’m sorry but you know what it might be something

39:27

because this is on the west coast this might be something that can’t be necessarily grown here but

39:33

there’s lots of plant material that could be grown well if it was sort of a shady

39:40

site i’d probably grow put in a maybe a low bush cranberry

39:46

okay so that’s deciduous but you could also put in a cedar although eventually the

39:52

cedar would grow really quite large so you might have to adapt

39:58

um the number of rows that you would depending on the spread

40:03

of something it’s hard for me to say exactly how many so for instance if you had something

40:10

that was this big when it was sculpted if you had something that grew naturally in that

40:16

shape that’s something that i would pick you could shear it of course it and and design it that way but um

40:23

the thing about it is is if it ends up growing you know to this size then all i would say is adapt that

40:30

for its scale implementation so you’d say to yourself okay i’m going to make a decision if the if that design normally had 40

40:38

shrubs installed i might be able to replicate that by installing like a third less

40:43

of the plant material so there’s a few things you could do if you wanted it to be evergreen that

40:49

would be lovely but it depends on the site itself and whether or not there’s shade

40:55

um and i don’t know exactly unfortunately even on well north is this

41:01

direction so that is north so i would suggest that you could put something in there that’s

41:06

i think that would be then uh that would be um

41:15

north that would be east and that would be quite a bit of shade because there’s

41:20

a rise there so the morning sun would only hit part of that but but

41:25

but it would require a little bit of it’s also very heavy soil so you might

41:32

have to very carefully pick the right plant and i’m sorry that i don’t know what’s installed there

41:38

okay yet you’re welcome does anybody else have any quick questions before we move on no we’re

41:45

okay okay five more minutes yeah okay no problem at all there’s just

41:53

two things i really wanted to talk about again i don’t want to go over like the these

42:00

estates that were were the best thing about this project here is the changes in the elevation for each

42:07

individual lot so this doesn’t have as much information in it i guess what i wanted to quickly talk

42:14

about here is some of the plant materials so um one of the things that people

42:20

one of the things that cornelia installed in these plant materials that um aren’t used as much in edmonton but

42:26

are fully hearty are rhododendrons and i just wanted to talk about as there’s a series of

42:31

rhododendrons that were developed by the university of helsinki and finland and they’re extremely hardy in edmonton

42:39

so they have a really extensive collection and that’s one thing about plant material i wanted to talk

42:44

about in here a lot of people don’t install them but um but they should perhaps more often

Approach from Site

43:00

okay the number one thing i want to talk about in this project is the approach from the site

43:07

so the line of sight to scale i don’t know if you can see this this is the person who’s here and then

43:15

at different times of year depending on whether the trees have lost their leaves you can see all the way across the whole

43:22

entire site so cornelia was famous for taking a sight even if it was extremely flat

43:29

and making it extremely interesting without changes in the terrain and actually putting in texture color

43:35

and different leaf patterns so that depending on the type of time of year if you had a line of sight you could see

43:42

the whole site over a long expanse and you could actually see the changes in seasonality

43:48

which would be super interesting the reason why i picked that up is because we live on the prairies and that’s a contrast to the other site

43:55

where this is extremely flat and then one thing i think i want to

Mending Natural Environment

44:00

talk about next just because we’re almost running out of time but this is actually a really important project and this is the northwest tory

44:08

territories legislative building and there’s that the thing that cornelia did with

44:14

this was something that she referred to as like mending

44:20

mending the natural environment so we’ve all been on construction sites well maybe some of us haven’t been

44:26

but we have been on construction sites where we have you know a huge expanse of earth that’s

44:32

upheaval it’s an upheaval of earth and then we put a building in there and then if it’s a place like the

44:39

northwest territories where you can see something’s on the site we own this much land this is a lot size

44:45

and then the natural environment is all around this she was a pioneer in dealing with situations where she

44:52

would actually actively repair the edges of a site so that it was

44:57

almost indiscernible you wouldn’t even know that the building was there so often it was

45:05

it was there not all of her projects are here of course but many of her projects were thoughtfully

45:14

researched but they were focused upon because the focus on her work was i

45:21

meant to say sorry is that there is a knitting together of almost like fabric between a tear in the

45:28

fair in the landscape where you disturbed it and then the fringes of the landscape where it

45:33

becomes almost one which is pretty amazing so in this building

45:41

was built specifically like that but i’m i’m running a bit out of time and i do want

45:46

to capture as many questions as possible and if somebody wants to talk about

45:51

other of the designs that i just touched on slightly please feel free please feel free

Water Mitigation

46:04

just just so we can get everybody’s questions even people on zoom yeah so basically if you have any

46:10

questions i’m going to repeat your questions and right now we have no questions in the chat so

46:17

if you have any any questions here uh for justine please go ahead

46:27

is anybody can anybody tell me if somebody doesn’t have a question can anybody tell me what their interest

46:33

is like you came here for a reason does anybody want to share what their interest is or something that

46:39

they want to learn yes i’m just a little curious about water talking about the west coast and having a slow breakfast

46:47

uh you know how do they use plants to

46:54

mitigate

47:05

well it’s really interesting plants actually capture a lot of water and a lot of people don’t

47:11

think about that they just think about runoff and soil erosion but plants do actually capture a lot of water and we

47:18

didn’t talk any at any extents of length about vancouver public library project where

47:24

cornelia actually installed a really important living roof and

47:30

green roofs are being installed everywhere now she actually wrote a manual for the

47:36

canadian government for green roof installation so when we think about heat island effect

47:42

and also slopes and water mitigation i do find that even if you do have a lot

47:48

of rudolph and it’s right next to your house if you look at the picture it’s not so

47:53

obvious from the photograph but what happens is the slope comes down but then it comes

48:00

this way so it comes down and this way and so it’s brought away from the foundation

48:06

um i mean there are french drain systems that can be installed in order to help and i’m not going to say run the

48:14

water off your property you shouldn’t really run any water off your property you should try to

48:20

capture all that water and actually divert it back into the system so at some point water

48:25

will find level and hopefully somewhere in your grating you end up finding somewhat level so that all that plant

48:33

material is actually capturing that water and it’s not running off and into the storm sewer or the city

48:38

the city sewer system if you can possibly do it okay so plants are great for that

48:45

they want the water the three drops of water that we have hopefully we get some more but yes

48:52

i hope does that answer your question yeah no problem is anybody else working on a project

48:58

they’re really interested in asking about if they want to plant a tree or put in a

49:04

pollinator gardener

49:10

yes actually the university of helsinki in finland is zone four the nice thing they have

49:17

going for them is of course they have moisture but of course there are standard rotos

49:24

that grow here that you can put in sheltered spots but the ones that have been developed and released

49:30

for cultivation they have hundreds of them on their site their growing site at the university but

49:36

they’ve released some so that they’re for sale and they’re slow growing but in sheltered

49:44

spots in edmonton they’re faring just fine i have two in my yard and they both bloom

49:50

this spring um these are about four or five feet but it depends on the cultivar

49:58

depends on the cultivar

50:05

yeah the thing is they won’t grow two stories high here but you know i actually have someone i

50:11

know who has a rhododendron touching their soffit of their house their bungalow

50:17

so it’s that big but it’s been there for 40 years so once you get them established if

50:23

they’re in a sheltered spot where there’s snow cover and not a lot of wood desiccating winds

50:28

you’d be surprised at what you can plant i have a question from our lovely zoom

Playground Design in Edmonton

50:35

can her playground design be built in edmonton with the city’s liability concerns

50:40

well i think the thing that’s interesting is is they can be built in edmonton with the city’s liability

50:45

concerns and of course i think that’s the thing about 2021 playground management you could build a

50:53

site with a you could certainly build a site with plants in it that is designed in a way that provides

51:01

respite where there’s not necessarily just like one or two token trees around a top lot

51:06

with a sandbox you could certainly do that could you build something that is

51:12

made out of um you’d have to change your materials under the city guidelines so for public

51:20

safety you’d have to change the materials because we’re talking about 2021 so there’s gonna be things that are

51:25

built that actually require less um like you could build a climbing wall

51:30

of some kind and you could build a sloped climbing wall or or a climbing i’m going to say if you build if you

51:38

build a raised wall that’s even lower than which is a building code requirement for a

51:45

railing and it’s stepped children will climb all over it

51:50

like it just it just you know and then if you had some you know some some land and plantings and another

51:57

rise you could create something creatively that’s not necessarily built exactly the

52:03

same way but but you have to be quite creative about it but i do believe you certainly could

52:08

take some many of the aspectual ideas that that cornelia is using and

52:14

actually adapt them to a little tiny small spot in edmonton absolutely that’s that sounds fantastic

Most Distinctive Features

52:20

i have another question from facebook this question is from susannah what would you say were the most

52:25

distinctive features of her design from your opinion i’m going to say

52:32

uh the the most distinctive features were the understated quality of her

52:38

designs very understated and it seemed almost like effortless

52:45

very natural very effortless very calming and very unassuming but a lot of

52:52

research went into them so that’s those are the those are the key things i think

52:58

i see does anyone else think of these designs differently would they

53:03

like to share something they think about cornelius designs that

53:09

well i didn’t know anything about it

53:20

and they mentioned that she was responsible for when you walk on the

53:26

need to make

53:41

it’s something that’s already there something that’s already there it belongs in our national environment

53:48

it’s right in front of you and it’s somewhere you know up in a pattern language a low wall is

53:55

somewhere where people will either play or sit so if you wanted to build this in edmonton and you built a low wall

54:02

that was stepped in two levels but it didn’t require a railing it was

54:07

low enough everyone with a coffee will sit and all their children will climb and clamor all

54:14

over and if it’s built or it’s logs they’ll go there and they’ll sit so we’re not vancouver and there is no

54:20

beach but there’s accidental beach but there’s just there’s no real beach but there’s a place

54:26

there’s a place gathering yes and it’s from something that’s actually just

54:35

there

54:45

it’s for everyone yes the green is there for everyone

54:50

and the green should be there for everyone that’s why she called things a vest

54:56

pocket park she called it a vest pocket park so it’s like this big you know and it’s just in this small

55:03

space in the city in the city i mean there’s a bus turn around

55:08

just north of here and it’s phenomenal the trees are phenomenal it’s a really

55:14

nice place to sit it’s just up the street city hall is over on the west they’re all new buildings here and it’s

55:21

a bus parking lot turn around it’s a really nice place to sit

55:26

so little things like that need to sort of be thought of about where we live and if you live in a

55:33

condo and you don’t have your own space but you have the ability to impact that space and you

55:41

live somewhere you should try to impact the space so that sharing quality is available to all the people who live

55:47

there i have another question from facebook yes uh it’s a planting question

Crab Apple Trees

55:54

we heard that columnar crab apple trees would work well in edmonton

55:59

is that true them or crab apple trees yeah they certainly will yeah they certainly will but you’ve got

56:06

to remember that when you buy them in a container they look like this they look like they’ll take up a

56:12

footprint of a dining room chair but they’re actually going to grow like this big

56:18

okay so don’t have it block your front walkway yeah so they do have a they are tall and

56:24

slim they have a fat what we call a fast get form but they still will just this big space

56:32

so don’t plant them you know like a meter and a half on center

56:38

it’s just going to be like blocking your whole space great yeah we have time for one more

Audience Question

56:43

question is there any question from the audience here since you guys came down okay

56:51

oh it’s okay

57:01

oh the geography in vancouver yeah okay i think the thing about urban density is

57:06

quite dense city so there’s people who don’t have a lot of personal space and if they

57:12

do it’s super expensive so it’s super expensive here too but it’s like

57:18

a lot more yes and then but it’s very green and then you’re basically have mountains

57:25

around you and the pacific ocean and so and really the pacific ocean is sort of

57:31

right there in the city so there are small islands that people

57:36

live on and also the city and it’s also quite uh it’s not flat like i find edmonton’s

57:43

relatively flattish city i mean it’s not as flat when you go into the river valley like this from the north or from the south

57:50

but other than that edmond’s kind of a flattish city and the trees are a lot

57:56

like bigger from a hugging point of view

58:02

uh well that’s it for our lovely tour uh thank you so much justine it truly

58:07

was amazing such a fun time it was uh a blast for us as well uh i’m just going to let people know that we

58:13

have a little survey that you can fill out our gallery attendant is going to come around with a piece of paper and a

58:19

pencil um and this is truly fabulous and thank you so so much for being oh you’re welcome i’m

58:25

really pleased to be asked now it’s a privilege to be asked i really appreciate it

58:30

for the opportunity to be asked i love plants and i love uh nature and i love i love

58:38

that feeling that people feel when they just are immersed in their natural world and they have appreciation for it and uh and that they

58:46

feel positive about planting things planting things and growing things and coming

58:51

together and having a beautiful place to live so thanks for having me and before i

58:57

before we clap for justine i also want to shout out helen and we also have sarah who worked

59:03

on this exhibition thank you so let’s all clap for everyone thank you so much and thank you so much for attending

59:10

everyone okay and that concludes our tour so take a take a gander around and we

59:17

also have surveys that you can fill out and please give feedback because someone will give me

59:23

feedback so if you if you think something was not the greatest just let them know

59:29

so i can make it better i would like to do that just because

59:34

and

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