‘I believe in the therapeutic
efects of greenery on the soul’
ABOVE, THE FIRST-FLOOR
HALLWAY AND OPEN-PLAN
LOUNGE ARE FLOODED WITH
NATURAL LIGHT THANKS TO
A SERIES OF LARGE SKYLIGHTS
BELOW, CONCRETE PILLARS
ENABLE THE HOUSE TO
‘FLOAT’ ABOVE A RAVINEcareer. Oberlander would create many magical
residential landscapes over the years, including the
Bagley Wright house near Seattle, which she began
working on with Erickson in 1977. Its sculpted
meadow was as artfully arranged as the collector
clients’ interiors – yet still wild and native.
In spite of her well-regarded residential work,
Oberlander prefers large urban schemes and her
two big Vancouver projects with Erickson – Robson
Square and the Museum of Anthropology (where
she extended the idea of the First Nations collection
into an ethno-botanical meadow) – are her best
known projects. Robson Square, commissioned
by a progressive provincial government as a ‘building
that would put people irst’ and completed in 1983,
was conceived as an urban oasis – a tower placed on
its side, extending over three blocks and comprising
a courthouse, government oices and recreational
public space. ‘It’s essentially a park on top of a
structure,’ explains Oberlander, who did extensive
research on which plants were best suited for the
downtown location. Her chosen palette of Japanese
maple trees and pines, magnolia and rhododendron,
in a syncopated, stagered design, both soothes and
elevates the urban aesthetic, ofering an abstract yet
lush vegetative response to Erickson’s concrete poetry.
The project would cement their mutual admiration
and a professional relationship that lasted until
Erickson’s death in 2009. Erickson once said that
‘Cornelia is the only person who understands what »Architecture Icon
132 ∑